CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SERIES PREFACE
EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction: The Sensual Middle Ages
Richard G. Newhauser

1 The Social Life of the Senses: Experiencing the Self, Others, and
Environments
Chris Woolgar

2 Urban Sensations: The Medieval City Imagined

Kathryn Reyerson

3 The Senses in the Marketplace: Markets, Shops, and Shopping in

Medieval Towns
Martha Carlin

4 The Senses in Religion: Liturgy, Devotion, and Deprivation

Béatrice Caseau

5 The Senses in Philosophy and Science: Mechanics of the Body or

Activity of the Soul?
Pekka Kärkkäinen

6 Medicine and the Senses: Feeling the Pulse, Smelling the Plague, and
Listening for the Cure
Faith Wallis

7 The Senses in Literature: The Textures of Perception

Vincent Gillespie

8 Art and the Senses: Art and Liturgy in the Middle Ages
Eric Palazzo
9 Sensory Media: From Sounds to Silence, Sight to Insight
Hildegard Elisabeth Keller

NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION
I.1 Upper left: the servant reporting the refusals of the three invited guests
to come to the great banquet (Luke 14:21). Upper right: the poor,
maimed, blind, and lame come to the great banquet (Luke 14:21).
I.2 Bartholomew the Englishman, De proprietatibus rerum, translated into
English by John of Trevisa; the beginning of the text.
I.3 Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, MS 8, fol. 130v
(Heilsbronn [?], last quarter of the twelfth century).
I.4 The hunting of a unicorn that has been attracted to the lap of a virgin;
in a Latin bestiary.
I.5 A banquet, with courtiers and servants: Valerius Maximus, Les Fais et
les Dis des Romains et de autres gens, trans. Simon de Hesdin and
Nicolas de Gonesse, vol. 1; the beginning of book 5.

CHAPTER ONE
1.1 An aquamanile, from Lower Saxony, c. 1200–50.
1.2 Detail of the Whore of Babylon, from the Apocalypse cycle of
tapestries at Angers, 1373–87.
1.3 The abbot’s kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey, first half of the fourteenth
century.
1.4 A gold finger ring, with a sapphire and garnet, from c. 1400, possibly
English or French.
 CHAPTER TWO
2.1 City walls, Aigues Mortes.
2.2 City wall tower, La Tour des Pins, Montpellier.
2.3 Limited perspective, Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val.
2.4 Stair street, Palma de Mallorca.
2.5 Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris.

CHAPTER THREE
3.1 Cooper and wheelwright. Chartres Cathedral, St. Julien the Hospitaller
window, c. 1215–25.
3.2 Making stirrups. Chartres Cathedral, St. John the Evangelist window,
c. 1205–15.
3.3 A draper’s assistant measures out striped cloth for a customer. Chartres
Cathedral, St. James the Greater window, c. 1220–5.
3.4 Fishmongers selling from a table. Chartres Cathedral, St. Anthony
window, c. 1215–20.
3.5 Moneychangers at their tables. Chartres Cathedral, St. Peter clerestory
window, c. 1210–25.
3.6 Wine criers and customer before a tavern. Chartres Cathedral, St.
Lubin window, c. 1205–15.

CHAPTER FOUR
4.1 Istanbul, Turkey, Hagia Sofia church: the Byzantine emperor in front
of Christ.
4.2 Bourges, France, cathedral: angel swinging a censer.
4.3 Damascus, Syria: mosque with minaret.
4.4 Monreale, Sicily: church bells.
4.5 Bourges, France, cathedral: stained glass window showing an apostle
reclining on Jesus at the Last Supper.
4.6 Thessalonika, Greece: Saint Demetrius’ crypt.
4.7 Pontigny, France: interior of the Cistercian church (founded in 1114).

CHAPTER FIVE
5.1 Gentile da Fabriano (1370–1427), The Adoration of the Magi, detail:
Joseph sleeping.
5.2 Giorgione ([Giorgio da Castelfranco], 1477–1510), from frescoes on
the artes liberales and artes mechanicae (c. 1500–10), detail: lunar
and solar eclipses.
5.3 Jean Pucelles (and his workshop), Belleville-Breviary (1323–6),
showing David and Saul.
5.4 Albrecht Altdorfer, Sebastian altar in the abbey of the Austin Canons,
Sankt Florian (near Linz), Austria (c. 1509–16), left interior wing on
the Passion, upper right scene: the arrest of Jesus.

CHAPTER SIX
6.1 The physician examines urine in a jordan. From a fourteenth-century
manuscript of the Antidotarium Nicolai.
6.2 A physician-professor feels the patient’s head while a student examines
the pulse. From a fourteenth-century MS of Hippocrates, Prognosis.
6.3 John Arderne uses his finger and his sequere me probe to examine an
anal fistula. From a fifteenth-century MS of the Practica of John
Arderne.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
7.1 Aristotle and Logic among the Seven Liberal Arts, second quarter of
the fifteenth century.
7.2 Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln; thirteenth century.
7.3 Turris Sapientiae (Tower of Wisdom), woodcut, German, second half
of the fifteenth century.
7.4 Domenico di Michelino (1417–91), “The Comedy Illuminating
Florence,” showing Dante and the Divine Comedy; fresco in the nave
of the Duomo in Florence, 1465.

CHAPTER EIGHT
8.1 Godescalc Evangelistary (c. 781–3): The Fountain of Life.
8.2 Carolingian ivory (end of the tenth century).
8.3 Cartulary of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou (c. 1200).
8.4 Psalter of Odo of Asti (twelfth century).

CHAPTER NINE
9.1 Hans Staden, Warhaftige Historia und Beschreibung (1557), 103.
9.2 Ywain frescoes at Schloss Rodenegg, Scene 10.
9.3 Eike von Repgow, Der Sachsenspiegel, Landrecht I 63, 5.
9.4 Initial A of Ainer küsterin. Johannes Meyer, Ämterbuch.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their
permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for
any errors or omissions there may be in the credits for the illustrations and
would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated
in future editions of this book.
 SERIES PREFACE
GENERAL EDITOR, CONSTANCE CLASSEN

A Cultural History of the Senses is an authoritative six-volume series

investigating sensory values and experiences throughout Western history
and presenting a vital new way of understanding the past. Each volume
follows the same basic structure and begins with an overview of the cultural
life of the senses in the period under consideration. Experts examine
important aspects of sensory culture under nine major headings: social life,
urban sensations, the marketplace, religion, philosophy and science,
medicine, literature, art, and media. A single volume can be read to obtain a
thorough knowledge of the life of the senses in a given period, or one of the
nine themes can be followed through history by reading the relevant
chapters of all six volumes, providing a thematic understanding of changes
and developments over the long term. The six volumes divide the history of
the senses as follows:

Volume 1. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity (500 BCE–500 CE)

Volume 2. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages (500–1450)
Volume 3. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Renaissance (1450–1650)
Volume 4. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment (1650–1800)
Volume 5. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Empire (1800–1920)
Volume 6. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Modern Age (1920–2000)
 EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge the inspiration in studying the
senses that the work of Constance Classen and David Howes has provided,
not just to me, but to an entire generation of students of the senses. Without
their demonstration of the possibilities and opportunities of sensology, this
volume would never have taken the shape it has now.
I am also grateful to Bloomsbury for financial support in reproducing
some of the images found here. The chapters by Chris Woolgar, Kay
Reyerson, and Béatrice Caseau contain photographs they took themselves; I
am grateful to them for allowing these images to be reproduced in this
volume. Images in the public domain were made available by The British
Library, London, and Wikimedia. I also wish to express my gratitude to a
number of institutions or individuals for permission to reproduce material
under copyright in their collections. This material is found in chapters by
the authors whose names are given in parentheses in the following list: the
Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford (Wallis); the
Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Beaux- Arts, Paris (Palazzo); the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Paris (Palazzo); The British Library, London (Wallis);
Getty Images (Woolgar); the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel
(Keller); the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington (Keller); the
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (Wallis); the Stadt- und
Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung,
Frankfurt a.M. (Palazzo); the Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen (Keller);
the Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg (Newhauser); the Victoria
and Albert Museum, London (Woolgar); and Stuart Whatling, who
maintains the website “The Corpus of Medieval Narrative Art” (Carlin).
Finally I wish to thank Ms. Sunyoung Lee, a graduate student in
Medieval Studies at Arizona State University, Tempe, for her assistance in
assembling the index.
 Introduction: The Sensual
Middle Ages
RICHARD G. NEWHAUSER

Recent scholarship on the senses has demonstrated that an essential step in

writing a comprehensive cultural history involves the reconstruction of a
period’s sensorium, or the “sensory model” of conscious and unconscious
associations that functions in society to create meaning in individuals’
complex web of continual and interconnected sensory perceptions (Classen
1997: 402; Corbin [1991] 2005; Howes 2008). This reconstructive task of
sensology is required for any period. But it has a claim to be particularly
indispensable for understanding the Middle Ages because both a theoretical
and a practical involvement with the senses played a persistently central
role in the development of ideology and cultural practice in this period
(Howes 2012; Newhauser 2009). Whether in Christian theology, where the
senses could be a fraught and debated presence; or in ethics, which formed
a consistent and characteristic element in understanding the senses in the
Middle Ages; or in medieval art, where sensory perception was often
understood to open the doors to the divine; or in the daily activity of
laborers, from agricultural workers to physicians, sailors to craftsmen, in
areas in which machines had not yet replaced the sensory evaluation of
work by human beings—in all of these areas, and in many more, the senses
were a foundational element in evaluating information and understanding
the world. For a number of reasons having to do partially with the alterity of
sensory information transmitted by medieval texts and partially with the
denigration of sensory perception in many theological works in the Middle
Ages, medieval scholars have joined in the undertaking of sensology only
in the relatively recent past. It can, in fact, be asserted that this “sensory
turn” is one of the most important ongoing projects of medieval studies in
the twenty-first century. And as a recent survey has demonstrated (Palazzo
2012), the past decade of intensive research has already borne significant
fruit in understanding the cultural valences of sensory perception in the
Middle Ages in their historical development.

THEOLOGY AND THE PORTALS OF THE SOUL

The fall of Rome and the dissolution of imperial regimes of the senses
resulted in a certain “atomization” of paradigms of sensory experience in
the context of early medieval courts, the comitatus, the village, or the
monastery. For example, in antiquity the indulgence in sensual pleasures by
some among the Roman elites, though perhaps not evidence of their
identification with the poor, was criticized by authors who considered
themselves to uphold traditional standards as a dangerous betrayal of the
moral principles that separated the upper levels of society from all that was
not “ideally” Roman (women, foreigners, the lower levels of society)
(Toner 1995). But located in decentralized monastic environments, sensual
indulgence took on the contours of rebelliousness against Christian faith
itself, and it could be condemned as both disobedience and a failure in
monastic duty. Typical for early medieval monastic theology dealing with
faith, social regulation, and much else, authority for these views was
derived through exegesis and homily from the Bible. Augustine of Hippo
(354–430) and Gregory the Great (d. 604), essential figures both in the
monastic tradition and for the secular church, were influential in
transmitting the conception of the theological danger of indulging the
senses (Newhauser [1988] 2007).
The essential question is the relationship of the senses to faith. A state of
holiness was effected by and demonstrated through the senses in the Middle
Ages, but it was also a common observation that the object of faith itself
was not apprehended by human sense perception. This understanding of
faith was supported through reference to Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is … a
conviction about (or: the evidence of [argumentum]) things that are not
visible.” One of the most influential contexts in Augustine’s works for
linking sensory experience to a lack of faith was his exegesis of the parable
of the great banquet in Luke 14. Augustine was concerned here with the
basis of faith. He noted that Christians cannot say they do not believe in the
resurrection of Jesus simply because they cannot see it with their eyes or
touch the empty tomb with their hands. For Augustine, such an argument
would amount to an undermining of the understanding of the resurrection.
To argue this way would be to separate oneself from those attaining heaven
just as the second guest who would not come to the great banquet held
himself back. “I have just bought five yoke of oxen,” he explained to the
servant sent to fetch him, “please excuse me; I am going out to test them”
(Luke 14:19). For Augustine, the five yoke were the five senses and the
banquet the guest missed was the eternal refection. It was important for
Augustine that the guest went out to test his oxen (probare illa), for this
showed his faithlessness. In effect, the second guest replaced belief with
perception and in this way made himself a captive of his senses. He was
more interested in perceiving the sensations the senses brought him than in
living through his faith (Augustine of Hippo 1845: 112.3.3–5.5). Perception
for the sake of perception was a theological dead end.
But sensory indulgence could be destabilizing in other ways as well.
Where Gregory the Great adopted the Augustinian interpretation of the
parable in Luke 14 and warned against the dangers of sensory perception as
an end in itself, his discussion was reminiscent of an earlier monastic
tradition that identified sensory disobedience as a theological and
institutional problem. This misuse of the senses led the mind to investigate
what in general terms may be called the “study of external matters”
(Dagens 1968), but it also took a much more specific and familiar form,
namely nosiness about the life of one’s fellow human beings. The more
someone became acquainted with the qualities of another person, the more
ignorant he was of his own internal affairs. Going outside of himself, he no
longer knew what was within himself. In this way, testing by means of the
senses, which Gregory inherited from Augustine, was not so much
Augustine’s critique of the rationale for faith, but rather was another sign of
the externalization from the self. Living through the senses removed one
from the internal life of discipline and obedience where the battle for the
perfection of one’s own spiritual life was to be fought. The second guest
excused himself in words that rang with humility, but nevertheless by
disdaining to come to the banquet he revealed arrogance in his actions
(Gregory the Great 1999: 2.36.4). He removed himself from the community
of those elevated to the eternal refection in his place, the poor and diseased,
as he also removed himself from the institutional bonds of the monastery
(see Figure I.1). The lessons found here were still being repeated for
monastic and lay audiences in the late tenth/early eleventh century. Ælfric,
for example, monk of Cerne and later abbot of Eynsham (d. c. 1012), goes
into great detail in the description of the senses themselves and their uses in
his treatment of the parable from Luke in Homily 23. Ælfric was
undoubtedly following the lead of Haymo of Auxerre when he elaborated
on Gregory the Great’s earlier admonition by observing: “we should turn
our gaze from evil sights, our hearing from evil speech, our taste from
prohibited aliments, our noses from harmful smells, our hands and whole
body from foul and sinful contacts, if we are desirous of coming to the
delicacies of the eternal refection” (Ælfric of Eynsham 1979: 215).
FIGURE I.1: Upper left: the servant reporting the refusals of
the three invited guests to come to the great banquet (Luke
14:21). Upper right: the poor, maimed, blind, and lame come
to the great banquet (Luke 14:21). From The Bohun Psalter
and Hours: London, British Library MS Egerton 3277, fol.
126v (England [London?], c. 1356–73). Public domain
image available from The British Library:
www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.A
SP?Size=mid&IllID=55963 (accessed May 2, 2013).
 The paradigm of the five external senses and an indication of perhaps its
most frequently seen hierarchy informs Ælfric’s exhortation (from the
“superior” sight and hearing to the more “corporeal” taste, smell, and touch;
see Vinge 1975). The paradigm was inherited from antiquity through Cicero
(Dronke 2002), but it was hardly as rigid as it is sometimes made out to be,
and in all events it allowed for more multisensoriality than a static hierarchy
might be taken to permit (Dugan and Farina 2012). Indeed, as has been
cogently argued, the liturgy of the mass developed in ways that “activated”
all the senses in a participation with the power of the divinity (Palazzo
2010). The five external senses also served as the basic pattern that was
used to develop a parallel system of spiritual senses, a concept that was
developed systematically in Western medieval theology (Coolman 2004;
Gavrilyuk and Coakley 2012). As Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)
presented them, the soul gives sense to the body, distributed in five bodily
members; likewise, the soul gives a corresponding spiritual value to the
senses, distributed in five kinds of love: sight is related to the holy love
(amor sanctus) of God; hearing to love (dilectio) at a remove from the
flesh; smell to the general love (amor generalis) of all human beings; taste
to a pleasant or social love (amor iucundus, amor socialis) of one’s
companions; and touch to the pious love (amor pius) of parents for their
young (both humans and animals) (Serm div 10.1, vol. 6/1: 121). Bernard
used a rhetorical synesthesia to describe the unity of how the spiritual
senses work: in his explication of the Song of Songs he wrote that, “The
bride has poured out an oil to whose odor the maidens are drawn to taste
and feel how sweet is the Lord” (Serm Cant 19.3.7, vol. 1: 112; see Rudy
2002: 13–14, 54–5). One can see here a model as it was to be used by later
contemplatives in which mystical visions also imply multisensual
encounters with the divinity: in one of Margaret of Oingt’s visions, for
example, a dry and barren tree blooms when its branches are flooded with
water and on the branches are written the names of the five senses (Bynum
1987: 249).
This elasticity in understanding the relationship between the senses can
be further documented in the career of “sweetness” in medieval theology,
where Psalm 33:9 was frequently invoked to express an embracing of the
senses in all that was desirable in the divinity (“O, taste and see that [or:
how] the Lord is sweet”). But “sweetness” also indicates a paradox of
tastes, articulating at one and the same time both the sublimeness of the
divinity and the stubbornness of human flesh (Carruthers 2006). In dietary
theory, which identified foods that corresponded with the humoral
composition of the human body, either to complement its healthy state or to
reverse unhealthy conditions, sweetness is said to have the closest affinities
to the body because its physical properties match those of the body itself. In
the West, dietary theory was derived mainly from Constantine the African’s
translation of the Liber dietarum universalium et particularium by Isaac
Judaeus, who wrote at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth
centuries. The Latin version of this text was excerpted in the thirteenth
century by Bartholomew the Englishman in his De proprietatibus rerum,
which circulated also, though less extensively than the Latin text, in John of
Trevisa’s Middle English translation beginning at the end of the fourteenth
century (see Figure I.2). As the Middle English text expresses it, “The sense
of taste experiences pleasure in sweet things because of its similarity to
sweetness. … For sweet food supplies abundant nourishment and is
naturally comparable to the parts and limbs of the body. This is what Isaac
says in the Diets” (Bartholomew the Englishman 1975–88, vol. 1: 118;
Woolgar 2006: 106).
The perception of a perfect fit between the qualities of sweetness and the
human body itself has been seen to provide part of the reason for the
emphasis in monastic theology on the Lord’s sweet taste (Fulton 2006: 196–
200), but the frequent use of Psalm 33:9 also demonstrates that in
articulating the divinity, not only the more “distant” sense of sight was
operative, but also the sense of taste, which requires ingestion (Korsmeyer
1999: 20).
With the introduction into medieval Western thought of works on nature
by Aristotle and his commentators and the transmission and translation of
scientific works from Greek and Arabic into Latin, theologians had access
to a wider range of material that reflected on sense perception. The system
of five external senses remained influential here as well, serving as the
basic paradigm for a parallel series of five internal senses derived ultimately
from Aristotle’s De anima. These psychological faculties were theorized by
Aristotle’s interpreters, above all Avicenna (d. 1037) and Averroës (d.
1198), as the steps involved in the process by which meaning was derived
from sensation (on imagination among the internal senses, see Karnes
2011). They were understood to work in stages of increasing abstraction,
but the process begins with sensation by the senses (or their combination
and judgment in the collection point that was called the “common sense”)
(Heller-Roazen 2008). The work of both Islamic scholars influenced
scholastic theologians, importantly among them Albert the Great (d. 1280)
(Steneck 1974).
But there were repercussions from those who felt that theologians
engaged too much with natural philosophy, such as the condemnations
affecting the Parisian theology faculty in 1277 (Aertsen et al. 2001). Of
course, this does not mean that theologians abandoned the senses. The
Treatise on Faith by William Peraldus (d. c. 1271), for example, composed
before 1249, gives attention to questions of the senses particularly to argue
that the modern dualist heretics of his day (that is to say, Cathars)
demonstrated their lack of faith by their faulty senses, perceiving only pure
evil in corruptible matter, which they said was the product of the principle
of evil. On the other hand, Peraldus notes, taste can judge that a wine is
good, hearing that a song is good, and so on; all matter has the potential for
goodness, being the creation of a single, good God (Chapter 8; William
Peraldus 1512, vol. 1: 40ra). On the other hand, some theologians (perhaps
especially among the Dominicans) evince a decided circumspection in
treating the topic of the senses, preferring the imperceptible faith as the
subject of theological speculation in contrast to the more secular matter of
perception by the senses. Roland of Cremona (1178–1259), first Dominican
regent master in Paris, included some discussion of the senses in his
Questions on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, but he does not carry his
inquiry too far, noting abruptly, “Let that suffice concerning the exterior
senses so far as theologians are concerned. Amongst the physici there are
some very subtle disputes about these senses, but they have nothing to do
with us …” (Mulchahey 1998: 66). And Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) gave
only somewhat cursory attention to the senses in the Summa theologiae
because while the task of the theologian included for Aquinas an inquiry
into the intellective and appetitive capacities of human beings, since both of
them are directly involved with virtue, the senses are related to the body’s
nutritive powers and can be considered pre-intellective (Pasnau 2002: 172).
FIGURE I.2: Bartholomew the Englishman, De proprietatibus
rerum, translated into English by John of Trevisa, the
beginning of the text. From London, British Library MS
Harley 4789, fol. 1r (England [London?], first quarter of the
fi fteenth century). Public domain image available from The
British Library:
http://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBi
g.ASP?size=big&IllID=22754 (accessed May 30, 2013).
 ETHICS, THE SENSES, AND THE PORTALS OF
SIN
As the examples of William Peraldus and Thomas Aquinas intimate, the
moral valences of the senses are ubiquitous in the Middle Ages; they are, in
fact, one of the most distinctive characteristics of the medieval sensorium
(Vecchio 2010; Woolgar 2006: 16–18). As has been noted, from Augustine
of Hippo and Gregory the Great into the seventeenth century, warnings
about the sin of curiosity established that sensory perception was potentially
dangerous (Newhauser [1982] 2007). By the early twelfth century, the
coenobitic institution’s loss of control over the type and quality of sensory
input defines the contours of one kind of monastic admonition against
vitium curiositatis. The most elaborate and multisensorial examination of
sinning by the curious misuse of one’s senses can be found in the Liber de
humanis moribus, a proto-scholastic text that reports the words of Anselm
of Canterbury (d. 1109). Anselm differentiates twenty-eight types of sinful
curiosity that are exclusively concerned with matters of perception located
in the dining hall or, even more outside the purview of the monastic
authorities, in the marketplace. The combination and number of senses
involved when a monk is too eager to see what dishes are being served; or
tastes the food on the table only to know whether it tastes good or not; or
sees, touches, and smells the spices for sale in the market simply to know
what each one is like etc.—all of these demonstrate a view of the boundless
sensory potentials of the refectory and the unrestrained context of
commercial activity that presents a stark challenge to monastic authority
(Anselm of Canterbury 1969: 47–50; Newhauser 2010).
The growth of universities as the European population expanded in cities
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries gave new intensity to this problem:
Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) relates a narrative that may be used to illustrate
this point. It deals with a certain Master Sella who was visited once in Paris
by the ghost of one of his former students, a young man of great promise
who had died unexpectedly. The student was dressed in a parchment cloak
covered with writing and when Sella asked what the writing was, he was
told, “These writings weigh more heavily on me than if I had to bear the
entire weight of that church tower over there,” pointing to the nearby
church of St. Germain. “For in these figures are the sophismata et
curiositates in which I consumed my days.” To show his former teacher
what torturous heat he now had to suffer because of these sophisms and
curiosities, the student let a drop of sweat fall on Sella’s extended hand. It
pierced his flesh as if it were the sharpest arrow. Jacques brings his
exemplum to a close by remarking pointedly that soon afterwards the
teacher quit the schools of logic and entered a monastery of the Cistercians
(Jacques de Vitry [1890] 1967: 12–13). The intimate way in which touch is
articulated—the weight of the parchment, the heat of hell’s fire, the pain of
searing sweat—emphasizes the urgency of this sense as a vehicle of
religious significance in disciplining the body (Classen 2012: 32).
Outside the university, the normative view of the senses in the moral
tradition became a regular feature of the myriad catechetical and pastoral
works produced in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215–16)
(Casagrande 2002). Many of these works articulate the conception of
“guarding the senses” (Adnès 1967), that is to say, they regard the senses as
the portals of sin, and the behavioral discipline they envisage is to be
created by maintaining “governance” over the senses (which demonstrates
how these works function metonymically as part of a program of social
control). Typical of texts of this kind is the Somme le roi, composed in 1279
by Laurent, a Dominican friar, for King Philip III of France (the Bold), and
a major influence on vernacular works of moral instruction in the centuries
to follow. Laurent advises that the senses are to be ruled by reason and
deliberation, opened and closed to tempting or uplifting sensory perception,
as needed, like windows or water sluices, so that each sense performs its
duty without sin or transgression (Laurent (Friar) 2008: 265; see the later
use of this image in Middle English in Chapter 34 of Jacob’s Well in
Brandeis 1900: 216–22). Behind Laurent’s text lies the more voluminous
treatment of the ethical senses in the work of William Peraldus. In his
Treatise on Temperance, he notes that taste and touch can be understood as
the most important of the senses because they are prerequisites for life itself
(i.e., for eating and reproduction), while the other three senses contribute to
the well-being of life and in this context can be considered of lesser
importance. Drawing on Aristotle’s libri naturales, Peraldus observes that
sight, smell, and hearing are activated at a distance from the object of
perception, but taste and touch require proximity to that object:

Whence the pleasures that occur through touch and taste are greater than those that occur
through the other three senses. And the inclination to the actions and pleasures stimulated
through these two senses is greater than that stimulated through the other three. Likewise, the
vices that occur in respect to the actions and pleasures of those two senses are more dangerous;
hence, the virtues that are contrary to these vices are more necessary and more noteworthy.
William Peraldus 1512, Chapter 8, vol. 1: 126va–b

Peraldus upends here what is sometimes thought of as the “authoritative”

hierarchy of the senses in the Middle Ages. But from the perspective of
pastoral concern for the senses, sobriety and (sexual) restraint, the two
contrary virtues important enough to receive their own designations in his
influential moral theology, are essential elements for both the life of the
individual and the functioning of the individual in the community. They
reveal the importance to the preacher of the immediacy of sensation and the
ethical task of regulating the body.
The moral valences of the senses were not a matter for hortatory treatises
and sermons alone. Texts of natural philosophy and their derivatives were
drawn on in the presentation of the “bestiary of the five senses,” in which
each sense was linked to an animal because of the animal’s often legendary
properties. These series were often illuminated (Nordenfalk 1976, 1985).
The representatives taken from the bestiary tradition in such lists could
change, but a typical series that mentioned each animal because it was
thought to excel all others in the powers of a particular sense included the
lynx for its sharp sight, the mole for hearing, the vulture for smell, the
spider for touch, and the monkey for taste. The lynx was not an animal
always understood in medieval Europe; Richard de Fournival’s mid-
thirteenth-century Bestiaire d’amour substitutes the lens here, a small worm
thought, like the lynx, to have the power to see through walls (2009: 192).
Both examples of sharp-sighted animals seem to represent the reception of a
misreading of the Consolation of Philosophy (Book 3, prose 8) by Boethius
(d. 524/5) who had written of Lynceus, one of the Argonauts endowed with
the gift of especially acute vision. In antiquity, human beings had served as
the representative of taste, but in the Middle Ages humanity was supplanted
by the monkey in this role (Pastoureau 2002: 142). A lesson of humility,
because of the limitations of humans to sense their world, was not difficult
to draw from this substitution, as Thomas of Cantimpré did in his
thirteenth-century encyclopedia of the natural world: “In the five senses a
human being is surpassed by many animals: eagles and lynxes see more
clearly, vultures smell more acutely, a monkey has a more exacting sense of
taste, a spider feels with more alacrity, moles or the wild boar hear more
distinctly” (1973: 106; Vinge 1975: 51–3).
The treatment of the olfactory sense demonstrates the wide range of
ethical possibilities the senses could have in the medieval sensorium. Susan
Harvey has called particular attention to the way in which the olfactory
sense aids in the construction of holiness in late antiquity (Harvey 2006),
and Peraldus deploys the intensity of smell to characterize the joy of the
virtue of hope as a “pre smell” (preodoratio) of life in heaven (Treatise on
Hope, 2; William Peraldus 1512: 71va). The odor of sanctity is ubiquitous
in medieval saints’ lives. In Chaucer’s tale of Saint Cecilia, for example,
Tiburce smells the crowns of roses and lilies that the angel has given
Cecilia and Valerian, and Tiburce is immediately transformed. As he says:
“The sweet odor that I find in my heart has changed me completely into
another nature” (“Second Nun’s Tale,” Chaucer 1987: VIII.251–2). If
holiness smells sweetly in Cecilia’s tale, one can observe elsewhere that the
relationship of the senses to transformation is also validated by the opposite
kind of smell: In “The Parson’s Tale” (X.208–10), the sinful will have their
olfactory sense assaulted by foul odors in hell; and in “The Summoner’s
Tale” the fart Thomas delivers into the hand of the friar (III.2149) is of
sufficient stench that the lord of the village can only imagine the devil put
this behavior into Thomas’ mind. The sensory regimes of the tales of the
Summoner and the Second Nun also underscore the social alignments of the
senses and the ethical valences that attach to the estates: the aristocratic
Cecilia, described as “of noble kynde” (of noble lineage), smells like a
representative of her class, whereas Thomas’ thunderous fart turns him in an
instant from a “goode man” with a substantial household, which had been
his initial description, into a loudly destructive (“noyous”) and malodorous
churl. Sensory media verify the direct application of the moral valences of
the senses: the morality play, The Castle of Perseverance (early fifteenth
century), makes the sensory dimensions of Belial (the devil) a sensational
olfactory experience, as well as a visual and an auditory one, complete with
clouds of burning powder to enforce in the audience the expected stench of
evil and the noise of the crack of hell, while on the other hand the virtues
defeat the attacking vices by throwing fragrant roses at them (Eccles 1969).

THE EDIFICATION OF THE SENSES

As was seen already in the treatment of “sweetness,” there is the potential
for paradox in the Christian sensorium. More broadly stated, in the
Aristotelian tradition of medieval thought, epistemology is based on
sensory perception, in that the senses act as the first steps that will result in
cognition. As Aquinas put it, the Peripatetic dictum that “there is nothing in
the intellect that was not previously in the senses” refers to human
epistemology, not to the divine intellect (Quaest. disp. de veritate, quaest. 2,
art. 3, arg. 19 and ad. 19; see Cranefield 1970). On the other hand, the
Christian moral tradition reacts with suspicion towards the senses as the
potential portals of sin. It has been argued that this paradox amounts to an
impasse that cannot be perfected, for if the means of perception are also the
agents undermining cognition, the connection of perception and the will can
have no coherence (Küpper 2008). But if the senses potentially destabilize
cognition, one can observe that the connection of perception and the will
still achieves coherence in the Middle Ages in a process of reforming the
interpretation of sensory data, that is to say, through educating the senses. In
fact, in all periods of the Middle Ages, sensation was not just guarded, but
guided. Guarding the senses is a fairly static situation; education is
progressive. Advancing from sensation to cognition involves an interpretive
process that always implicates the edification of the senses.
One way of imagining the importance of this process can be found in a
remarkable illumination produced probably in the monastery at Heilsbronn
in the last quarter of the twelfth century (see Figure I.3) (Lutze [1936]
1971: 1–5). The image here is well known (Jütte 2005: 78), though its
implications for the medieval edification of the senses have not been
emphasized before. The manuscript contains copies of four books of the
Bible (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, and Lamentations), with some
related illustrations, but also an allegorical illumination of the path of life.
This ladder of perfection (or damnation) (Eriksson 1964: 448–9) begins in
the lower right corner where humanity follows first along the steps of the
senses (from the bottom up: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch). At the top of
the ladder is heaven with Jesus as the central figure of inspiration. At the
bottom one finds Satan in hell with three smaller devils. The senses alone
carry humanity only to the fork in the ladder; to continue upward, sensory
information must be fortified not only by the infusion of the Gifts of the
Holy Spirit, but also by humanity’s moral progress through the cardinal
virtues (prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice). The downward fork to
hell is marked by the steps of humanity’s “depraved habits,” amounting to
the vices contrary to the cardinal virtues (imprudence, intemperance,
inconstancy [leuitas], injustice), inspired by seven demons generated from
hell (presumably, the seven deadly sins). The senses here provide raw
material for cognition, but they achieve the desired moral coherence that is
the focus of the illumination only when informed through human effort in
virtue aided by grace. As the text along the border of the illustration
emphasizes, what is depicted here is the mind (mens) either vexed by
fleshly imaginings or striving virtuously for heaven.
 FIGURE I.3:Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, MS 8,
fol. 130v (Heilsbronn [?], last quarter of the twelfth
century). Reproduced with permission of the
Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Educating the mind’s eye to interpret clearly was one of the first steps
taken by Lady Philosophy in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, wiping
away his tears clouded by “mortal things” (Book 1, prose 2). And as the
Erlangen manuscript makes clear, visual images were not simply teaching
tools of a narrative kind. Indeed, illuminations of all types fulfilled essential
functions in guiding mystical contemplation, serving “as instruments of
visionary experience … to induce, channel, and focus that experience”
(Hamburger 1989: 174). Later medieval female visionaries have been the
center of much scholarly attention for the way they used the sensory
dimensions of visual depictions and other material objects in their spiritual
practices. Some of the most interesting material is related in the Sister-
Books composed by Dominican nuns in the late Middle Ages in German-
speaking areas of Europe. The power of visual images can be documented,
for example, among the nuns in St. Katharinenthal (near Diessenhofen,
Switzerland), where Hilti Brümsin is related to have prayed before a
painting of Jesus’ flagellation so intensely that she was guided into a state
of ecstasy lasting for two weeks in which she experienced the same pain
and bitterness that Jesus had suffered (Lindgren 2009: 62).
Edification of the senses was important not only for the “high culture”
end of cognition, but also among all the many groups within the varying
levels of society, whatever their different understanding of how sensing
worked. Learning to perceive was, of course, common in all professions,
from physicians to craftsmen. Without the assistance of sophisticated
instrumentation, the professions had to rely more directly on the evaluation
of their senses to gather information and they had to train themselves to act
on accurate assessment. Touch was essential in some professions:
stonemasons had to learn how much pressure to apply when hewing stone,
blacksmiths how hard their hammer blows should land on hot iron in order
to shape it, bakers how firm a loaf should be when it has risen before being
baked. But other senses were called on as well: Constantine the African’s
Pantegni, adapted from the Arabic of Haly Abbas (as he was known in the
West) in the late eleventh century, contains practical instruction on testing
medicine by taste, understanding the qualities of medicine by smell, and
recognizing medicine by color (Burnett 1991: 232).
The growth of scientific texts in the high and later Middle Ages gave new
impetus to the possibilities for explaining sensations in order to provide
edification concerning their “correct” interpretation. Roger Bacon (d. 1294)
laid out a blueprint for the use of optics as a foundation for the study of
theology. He concluded his Perspectiva with a section arguing, as he put it,
for the “inexpressible utility” of this science for the understanding and
propagation of divine truth: “For in divine scripture, nothing is dealt with as
frequently as matters pertaining to the eye and vision, as is evident to
anybody who reads it; and therefore nothing is more essential to [a grasp of]
the literal and spiritual sense than the certitude supplied by this science”
(Bacon 1996: 322; see Newhauser 2001; Power 2013: 114). The lists of
optical phenomena found in the new works on optics produced in this
period had a direct function in edifying the sense of sight, making refraction
understandable, for example, or explaining the effects of curved mirrors
(Akbari 2004; Biernoff 2002). Peter of Limoges (d. 1306) took this one step
further in The Moral Treatise on the Eye (1275–89), creating a
“hybridization of science and theology” (Denery 2005: 75–115; Kessler
2011: 14). But edifying all of the senses lay at the heart of Peter’s work.
Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour had deployed the senses in a
document of literary and erotic seduction, applying animal lore concerning
the Sirens to explain how the narrator of the text had been captured by his
beloved through his sense of hearing (thereby drawing on a tradition in the
medieval French soundscape in which the beloved lady’s voice is likened to
that of the Sirens, both seductive and death-dealing; see Fritz 2011: 161).
Richard used the image of the tiger to explain how the narrator had been
captured by sight (as a tiger was said to be stopped in its tracks by the sight
of itself in a mirror). He drew on the panther (said to emit an alluring odor)
and the unicorn (attracted by the smell of a virgin and then killed by
hunters) to explain his capture by his olfactory sense (Richard de Fournival
2009: 182–202) (see Figure I.4). Touch and taste are not included because
the narrator’s erotic desire remains as yet unfulfilled. Peter of Limoges,
apparently borrowing directly from Richard de Fournival, re-analyzes the
same sensory and bestiary material to make of it not a narrative of sexual
passion, but a warning about the sin of lust (2009: 104–6). The residue of
the sensory attractiveness of love that had been foregrounded in Richard’s
work remains in Peter’s treatise only as a subtext; it has been overlaid with
a veneer of explicit warning against women as the inciters to lust, a call to
identify potentially arousing sensory stimulation and to curtail it.
Much of the edification of the senses presented here depended on the
stability of well-established knowledge. By the late Middle Ages, however,
parts of the tradition of the medieval sensorium, in which there was a
continuity of perception and meaning, became brittle. A telling realization
of disruption in this process of edification can be noted in the great
allegorical encyclopedia of English politics, society, and the church that is
Piers Plowman. In Passus 15 of the B-version (composed around 1379), the
personification Anima bemoans a decline in learning that is also a
breakdown in the connection of sensory signs and what they used to mean:

FIGURE I.4: The hunting of a unicorn that has been attracted to

the lap of a virgin; in a Latin bestiary. From London, British
Library MS Harley 4751, fol. 6v (England [Salisbury?],
second quarter of the thirteenth century). Public domain
image available from The British Library:
http://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBi
g.ASP?size=big&IllID=39625 (accessed May 30, 2013).

Both the educated and the uneducated are now alloyed with sin,
so that nobody loves his fellow human being, nor our Lord either apparently.
For what with war and evil deeds and unpredictable weather,
experienced sailors and clever scholars, too,
 have no faith in the heavens or in the teaching of the (natural) philosophers.
Astronomers who used to warn about what would happen in the future
make mistakes all the time now in their calculations;
sailors on their ships and shepherds with their flocks
used to know from observing the sky what was going to happen—
they often warned people about bad weather and high winds.
Plowmen who work the soil used to tell their masters
from the kind of seed they were going to sow what they would be able to sell,
and what to leave aside and what to live by, the land was so reliable.
Now all people miscalculate, at sea and on the land, as well:
shepherds and sailors, and so do the plowmen:
they are neither able to calculate nor do they understand one procedure after another.
Astronomers are also at their wits’ end:
they find that what was calculated in a region of the earth turns out just the opposite.
Langland [1978] 1997, B.15.353–70: 263–4

From the top to the bottom of society, the learned to the uneducated,
certainty has been displaced by skeptical recognition of the limits of
transmitting the old knowledge. For Langland and his contemporaries, the
very foundation of what had been a stable system of sensory evaluation,
even of natural signs, had been inexplicably shaken. What had been certain
in judgment among the transmitters of folk wisdom, the sailors and
shepherds, but also the learned astrologers, was in need of re-evaluation.

SOCIAL ORDER AND THE SENSES

What Langland described as a disruption in learning was only one of the
important changes taking place in the late Middle Ages. The aftermath of
often cataclysmic events at this time, which importantly included a series of
famines in the early fourteenth century and then the Great Plague in the
middle of the century, also included changes in social mobility that can be
measured by alterations in the sensorium. One response to the reduced
supply of labor following the population loss of the Black Death was that
wages went up. At the same time, seigneural obligations on the peasantry
were reduced. These factors had the effect of increasing the spending power
of laborers, which meant they had the capacity now to imitate aristocratic
styles of life (Dyer 2005: 126–72). Social imitation allowed for movement
among the estates and the emulation of sensory regimes that were formerly
above one’s rank: the peasants ate, drank, dressed, and in some cases
constructed homes like their social superiors.
All of this belongs to the history of the sense of taste, both literally and
culturally understood, as the social sense that is one of the determinants of
identity and class affiliation (Bourdieu 1984). And the reactions to
increased mobility in taste can be used to document this matter, such as one
finds in Piers Plowman. After the collapse of the attempt to achieve social
harmony through the collective plowing of the half acre and at a time when
the threat of famine, personified as Hunger, has been lulled to sleep with
enough to eat, some of the lower orders are shown in this poem as no longer
accepting the kind of food they ate earlier in the normal course of things:

Nor did any beggar eat bread made from bean meal,
but from fine and good flour, or else pure wheat flour,
nor in any way drink a mere half-penny ale,
but only the best and the darkest that brewers sell.
Langland [1978] 1997, B.6.302–5: 109

Though he approached this issue with very different class allegiances, John
Gower was in agreement with Langland about the disruption of challenges
to taste. In the Visio Anglie, which Gower added to the Vox Clamantis in the
second half of 1381, he turned the peasants who participated in the Rising
of that year into domesticated and wild animals who behave in the most
destructive ways: the dogs turn their noses up at table scraps and claim
instead well-fattened food; the foxes find raiding chicken coops beneath
them. All of this becomes a vision of the sense of taste in revolt (Gower
2011, 5.383–4, 6.484: 54, 60; see Newhauser 2013). Such gustatory
changes are accompanied by a series of other actions that demonstrate the
imitation of the upper orders by the peasantry and gentry, and the lower
orders’ increased amounts of disposable income. Urban designs of houses
influenced the building of rural homes; an increased use of pewter for
tableware can be attributed to its similarity in appearance to the silver used
by aristocrats. The spread of what had been first a court fashion of close-
fitting clothes to the lower orders after the mid-fourteenth century is typical
of the pattern of aspiration of these orders in imitating aristocratic fashion
(Dyer 2005: 136–47). And even within the upper levels of society, the
competition to be fashionable led to an ever greater display of clothing
accessories, as seen in a story concerning a baroness of Guyenne and the
lord of Beaumont related by Geoffrey de La Tour Landry (1371). The lord
assured the baroness that although only half of her clothes were trimmed
with fur, he would see to it that all of his wife’s clothes had fur trim and
embroidery (Barnhouse 2006: 119).
Despite local variations, the key factor in the medieval diet was social
class and its connections to the display of wealth and power, on the one
hand, and social competition, on the other (Schulz 2011; Woolgar 2007:
182). If the lower orders imitated those above them in the social hierarchy,
the upper orders also did what they could to distinguish themselves by their
sensory display, among other means through great feasts (see Figure I.5).
Food at banquets was not just intended to satisfy the palate, but to appeal to
the sense of sight as well. Many recipes intended for the upper levels of
society specify with particular care the color that food was to take, detailing
the ingredients that are to be used to achieve these shades. In The Forme of
Cury (The Method of Cooking), composed by the chef to King Richard II of
England and authoritative in the fourteenth century, the cook is instructed to
color blaunche porre (leek sauce) with saffron, noumbles (organ meat) with
blood, and the surface of founet (lamb or kid in almond milk) with the blue
color of the alkanet plant (Hieatt and Butler 1985: 98, 100, 111–12). At
feasts “color, shape, and spectacle were as highly regarded as taste and
smell”: meat could be ground up, shaped, and tinted green to look like
apples, pheasants were cooked in pieces, then put together again in their
feathers, and served as if they were still alive (Freedman 2008: 37). Things
not being what they seemed to be was often a source of pleasure in the
Middle Ages, and surprising the senses in great feasts became one more
sign of the power of the upper orders.
Tricking the senses played other roles as well. Sharp practices in the
marketplace depended on deceiving the senses of buyers; they became a
marker of the power of an experienced class of unscrupulous merchants and
the potential lack of power among all those exposed to the predatory
practices of commercialization. Many treatments of greed in the Middle
Ages warn about these kinds of activities. William Peraldus’s Treatise on
Avarice analyzes the triple deceit committed by some merchants in their
scales, weights, and measures (Part 2, Ch. 4; William Peraldus 1512, vol. 2:
58vb–59rb). In a tradition descending from Peraldus through the Somme le
roi, The Book of Vices and Virtues (c. 1375) transmitted this analysis to an
English audience:

FIGURE I.5:A banquet, with courtiers and servants: Valerius

Maximus, Les Fais et les Dis des Romains et de autres gens,
trans. Simon de Hesdin and Nicolas de Gonesse, vol. 1, the
 beginning of book 5. From London, British Library MS
Harley 4372, fol. 215v (France [Normandy (Rouen?)], c.
1460–1487). Public domain image available from The
British Library:
http://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBi
g.ASP?size=big&IllID=14411 (accessed May 30, 2013).

The third [type of avarice committed by merchants] is in the deceit that men and women
practice in weights and scales and in false measures, and this can happen in three ways: As when
a man has various weights and various measures and he buys using the larger ones and sells
using the smaller ones. The second manner is when a man has a true weight or a true measure,
but he weighs or measures falsely and perpetrates deceit, as tavern keepers, and those who
measure out cloth, and those who weigh out spices, and other similar types of men. The third
manner is when the person who carries out the sale does so with deceit in terms of the thing he
wants to sell by making it weigh heavier or appear to be more beautiful and of a greater quantity
than it actually is.
Francis [1942] 1968: 40

Sensory manipulation appears here as a function of the profit motive, a

harbinger of the potential to use the sensorium for commercial purposes, as
it also exposes the underbelly of the kind of sensory stimulation on which
consumerism relies (Howes 2005b), for the sharp practices described here
give only the appearance of stimulation.
Foundational for a comprehensive historiography of the Middle Ages, an
understanding of the wide variety of cultural functions served by the senses
is the focus of the chapters in this volume. Whether these functions
unfolded in the practicalities of everyday social life, the contemplation of
philosophers, or the practice of physicians; whether they describe the
individual’s sensing of religion, art, literature, or the media; whether they
are located in the city or the marketplace, all of the chapters here analyze
the functions of the medieval sensorium in a way that brings to light its
most characteristic elements. They demonstrate, first of all, the remarkable
amount of agency with which the senses were endowed in the long
medieval millennium. Sensory organs were not just passive receptors of
information, but actively participated in the formation of knowledge. This
particular characteristic of the medieval sensorium is sometimes
conveniently documented by referring to the extramission theory of vision.
Here, sight was said to occur when a visual ray left the eye of the observer
and landed on an object, thus relating sight closely to touch (Newhauser
2001). But the theory of extramission was largely replaced by the
intromission theory championed by the Perspectivists in the thirteenth
century, according to which the process of sight begins when a ray of light
enters the (now more passive) eye. Nevertheless, the agency of the senses
can still be demonstrated by noting that throughout the Middle Ages speech
continued to be numbered among the senses of the mouth. Taking in tastes
formed a continuum with the production of the sounds of speech,
demonstrating both the agency of the mouth as sense organ and the much
wider range of reference in understanding medieval taste than what is
expected from that sense today.
Furthermore, the contributors to this volume demonstrate amply that
statements of the accepted hierarchy of the senses are often belied by both
practical and theoretical sensory realignments. Sight and hearing were not
always the dominant senses: for the medical profession, taste was more
decisive (Burnett 1991). Nor were the external senses the only system of
sensory perception developed in the Middle Ages: both the internal senses
and the spiritual senses were essential elements of the perceptual process in
philosophical and contemplative contexts, respectively. The agency of the
medieval senses also had ethical implications in the evaluation of sensory
information in the process of understanding the world: as a number of the
chapters in this volume emphasize, because the senses played an active role
in the process of perception, they were a vital element in the formation of
the individual’s moral identity. In an effort to create a Christian ethics of the
senses, moral theologians often contrasted the pleasures of the spiritual
senses with those of the external senses. These and many other specifically
medieval characteristics of sensory experience and their manifold
interpretations in the Middle Ages are the subject of this volume. From the
early development of explicitly urban or commercial sensations to the
sensory regimes of Christian holiness, from the senses as indicators of
social status revealed in food to the scholastic analysis of perception
(through the external to the internal senses), the chapters here underscore
both how important the project of sensology is for understanding the
Middle Ages and how important the Middle Ages are to a comprehensive
cultural history of the senses.
 CHAPTER ONE
_____________________________________

The Social Life of the

Senses: Experiencing the
Self, Others, and
Environments
CHRIS WOOLGAR

Any discussion of the senses in medieval Europe must have as its starting
point a recognition that, as at any other period, contemporary understanding
of the operation of the senses was culturally determined. While there were
similar attitudes across Europe, derived from a common intellectual
heritage, beliefs and practices varied from country to country, social group
to social group, and chronologically. For the first part of the Middle Ages,
there is comparatively little written evidence for sensory experience, and we
are to a large extent dependent on the oblique and the inferred, on
projecting the information we have about philosophical and theological
understanding of sensory perception onto society at large, and on
deductions from material evidence. For the years after 1100, there is a much
wider range of written evidence, with new classes of sources, such as
inventories and accounts, that provide incidental information about
perception and sensory environments. These allow us to explore the
operation of the senses in terms of individual experience. The main focus of
this chapter, on the social life of the senses, is therefore on the later period.
In general terms, in the Middle Ages perception was considered a two-
way process. Perceptual information was received by the sense organs,
much as we might now understand them to operate; but at the same time
these organs gave out information. In this way moral and spiritual qualities,
as well as perceptual information, passed between perceiver and perceived.
The process of perception was understood to be based on direct contact or
close proximity. This can be illustrated by the two prevailing theories of the
operation of sight—extramission and intromission. In the former, based on
Neoplatonism, mediated by St. Augustine, rays of light were sent out from
the eye and brought back to it light or fire from the object that was
perceived. Intromission, more commonly understood in the later Middle
Ages to be the way in which vision functioned, brought to the eye light
from the object that was perceived, about its shape and movement,
replicated in a series of “micro-images” or species between the object, the
eye, and the common sense in the head. Whatever the philosophical and
theoretical rationale for perception, significantly for our understanding of
the social operation of the senses this contact was popularly believed to
bring with it not only the image but also other characteristics of the object.
It was an understanding like this that led Thomas Cantilupe, the saintly
Bishop of Hereford (d. 1282), to hide his face in his cowl when women
passed, lest he be corrupted by seeing them. The lethal power of the sight of
the legendary basilisk operated in this way (Woolgar 2006: 21–2, 148–9,
203).
Perception was not limited to those faculties we now see as sense organs,
nor to the five senses of antiquity. Speech, for example, was held to be one
of the senses of the mouth: the outgoing part, while taste was the receptive
part (Woolgar 2006: 84–116). Speaking was an ethical act; the power of
words, however, lay as much in their sound as in their comprehension. A
fifteenth-century English treatise on child-bearing, derived in part from the
Trotula, a compilation originating in southern Italy in the eleventh/twelfth
century and in part ultimately from a second-century ce gynecological
treatise by Soranus, a Greek physician, described how a birth might be
induced. Religious and magical words were written on a scroll, which was
then cut into small pieces and given to the woman to drink. Another remedy
relied on the apotropaic power of the words of the Magnificat, written on a
scroll, and girded about the woman (Barratt 2001: 64–6). Here there was
direct contact, ingestion in one case, and touch in another; and the words
conveyed a potent moral force. These practices are hard to distinguish from
what we might now call magic, but they were in fact closely connected to
senses.
There was a strong moral charge associated with perception, especially
from the perspective of Christianity. A fourteenth-century English
translation of Friar Laurent’s Somme le Roi underscored the importance of
keeping well all the bodily wits, the eyes from foolish lookings, the ears
from listening to foolish words, the hands from foolish touching, the
nostrils from liking sweet smells, and the tongue from too much delight in
good food and savors. The senses were the windows of the soul, by which
death—that is eternal perdition—might go to the heart (Francis [1942]
1968: 225). That moral charge might also be conveyed through appearance
—and sight: physiognomy and gesture were of especial significance in the
perceptions that they might transmit about an individual.
Sensation extended beyond the limits we might now set upon it. From the
start of life in the womb, to death and beyond the grave, perception was not
only affected by the human, but also by other animate and inanimate bodies
and objects, of this world and of others. The unborn and the dead were a
part of the community, and their perceptions and influences on the senses
were of great importance. Practices such as leaving open the mouth of a
mother who had died, so that her unborn child might breathe as it was cut
from her, surrounding the dead with holy sound, in psalms, and protecting
them by burial in consecrated ground, and accounts of resolving the
difficulties of the undead, the revenants who appeared sometimes to terrify
their neighborhoods or to perform bargains with the living, all speak of
these wider processes of perception (Cassidy-Welch 2001: 217–18, 223;
James 1922; Powicke and Cheney 1964, 1: 70, 635; Schmitt 1994;
Thompson 1902–4, 1: 353).

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STUDY OF

PERCEPTION
Given that medieval notions of sensation expected the individual to be
affected directly by the presence of others—or indeed, of objects—and their
qualities, physically, morally, and spiritually, texts relating to education,
instruction, and regulation generally have much to tell us about sensory
culture, in addition to the sources for the aesthetic, philosophical, and
religious discussions of sensation considered elsewhere in this volume.
Some aspects must have been imbued in the first years of life, transmitted
from mother to child, and these are largely opaque to us; but we also have
discursive accounts from medieval records which give us insights into
perception in action and the socio-sensory environment more generally.
From the later Middle Ages, models for behavior appear in books of
etiquette and in domestic regulations, principally for elite establishments.
Religious direction, marking out sensory practices, appears in regulatory
documents, penitentials from the early period, and for the adult, or those old
enough to confess, in instructions for confessors, a genre that grew after the
Fourth Lateran Council of 1215–16. There are further, special categories of
religious direction, such as monastic rules and the customaries that
amplified them, and the detail of routines for novices to induct them into a
new life and its patterns of behavior. While all these religious documents
may provide us with a series of normative texts, there are difficulties in
establishing the status of the practices they outline: many of the texts are
closely related and it is difficult to track how customs and practices evolve.
That notwithstanding, they give us information about sensory practice that
comes from no other source, and they are used in this chapter to sketch
some of the principal elements of the sensory culture of monastic life.
Formal legislation provides a further category of social control with a
sensory aspect; again, it is important to understand the difference between
formal regulation and actual practice. Beyond these texts, discussions of
gesture, appearance, and the study of physiognomy are of relevance. To
balance theoretical or normative descriptions of behavior, we have a
plethora of information about the senses in practice, incidentally
documented in records of people going about their daily lives, and this can
give us unique information.

PHYSIOGNOMY AND GESTURE

In understanding the sensory consequences of and for individual behavior,
the study of physiognomy revealed to medieval men and women much that
they needed to know about others. Appearance mattered because it allowed
the individual to judge character and it was indicative of moral qualities to
be conveyed—by perception—to the observer or those nearby. These ideas
were inherited from classical antiquity and, while they were not without
their critics, they found a resonance throughout the period (Frank 2000:
135–7, 142–5; Shaw 1998). This was one of the reasons why cosmetics
were considered inappropriate: they concealed the true nature of the
individual—but their use was widespread, and texts like the Trotula
contained information about preparations for women to whiten—or redden
—their faces (Green 2001: 138–9). There was a more general notion that to
be a good and worthy individual, or, indeed, to be considered fully human,
one had to have all one’s faculties. Physical disability and sensory
impairment were impediments to moral goodness. At the Augustinian house
of Barnwell, in Cambridgeshire, in 1295–6, the instructions for taking in
novices required them to have all their natural faculties (naturalia), “that is,
eyes and other members,” as well as requiring that they be suitable, fit for
society, stable, and well mannered (Clark 1897: 120).
Sensory perfection was required for some general acts. In the late
medieval period, those wishing to make a will had to meet various tests of
capacity: they had to be in an appropriate spiritual state, typically reached
by confession prior to making the will; they had to be sound in mind, a state
frequently contrasted with bodily infirmity; but that infirmity
notwithstanding, they had to be in full possession of their sensory faculties.
Bartolus de Saxoferrato (1313–59), in his commentary on Justinian’s
Digest, followed by subsequent commentators, excluded the blind from
will-making, as well as those unable to speak. It was for this reason that
John Sheppey, Bishop of Rochester, who made his last will in September
1360, recorded that he had the moistness and use of all his senses (habens
omnium sensuum meorum umacitatem et usum), except the ability to walk
(Helmholz 2004: 402–3; Woolgar 2011: xxix, xxxv, 219).
Beyond appearance, the way that one moved and conducted oneself, in
terms of gesture, was especially significant. Medieval society thought about
gesture and regulated it. The instructions for the hostillar of Barnwell—
responsible for guests—noted that he was frequently in contact with people
in a range of conditions and of both sexes. He was to do nothing in his
manner of walking, standing, and in all his other movements or speech
except what was creditable for a man of religious life. If he had nothing of
substance to contribute to conversation, he was to maintain a cheerful
countenance and to speak well, for agreeable words multiply friends (Clark
1897: 192).
Instructions for novices in monasteries are especially interesting with
regard to the senses: the novice had to leave behind him all the gestures of
the secular world and adapt his perceptions to a new life, typically under the
tutelage of a master. Treatises such as Hugh of St. Victor’s Institutio
novitiorum contained detailed guidance on gesture, that is movements of the
whole body, and also on “figure,” the outward manifestation of the soul’s
inward movements: the text served as a model for many other instructions
for novices (Hugh of St. Victor 1997; Schmitt 1991). The thirteenth-century
advice given to Benedictine novices at Eynsham Abbey followed them
through the day. They were to abstain from all contact with seculars, with
the life that they had left for the monastery: they were not to leave the
cloister, except on processions (with the exception of taking the air in the
monastic cemetery, which they might do by licence), nor to eat flesh meat
(dangerous through its literal link to carnality, absorbed in consumption),
even if they were in the infirmary where traditionally this stricture was
relaxed. They were to sit in order, on benches, or on the ground, in the
cloister; at the midday rest, they were to remain under the bedcovers in the
dormitory: they were not to read nor do other work, and their beds were to
be between those of the masters and seniors of the house; they were not to
talk among themselves unless a master was present; the masters were to sit
among them, and were to demit their charge to no one. During the period
before their profession there was nothing that they might say or do without
the permission of the master, except for confession and the necessities of
nature. It was in this period of induction that novices were brought to the
models of sensory behavior expected of monks. The detailed regulation of
behavior extended to bodily questions, like coughs and colds. Effluvia from
the nose or the chest were to be disposed of cautiously, to the ground, and
then trodden underfoot, lest the results disturb the squeamish or soil the
clothing of others bent in prayer—and these bodily excesses were not to be
disposed of within the church. Those with troublesome coughs and phlegm
were to be taken out of church by their master and were to rest until the
infirmity abated. These instructions tell us not only about the sensory
routines that their new life entailed, but also about the importance of
preserving the sensory environment of others (Gransden 1963: 37–9, 47).

THE ETIQUETTE OF THE SENSES

Individuals were trained in sensory practices, establishing acceptable
patterns of behavior, in the first years of life through interaction between
mother and child, or of nurse and household environment more generally.
We know of arrangements for clothing, keeping children warm, swaddling
and bedding, and for the food of the very young: beyond breastfeeding,
mothers and nurses partly masticated food for young children (Orme 2001:
51–92). Paradoxically, we know most about childhood experience from the
atypical, from records of accidents or in accounts of miracles. These give a
one-sided picture, but an illuminating one, with a looser role for parental
supervision in many instances.
On the night of September 6/7, 1303, in the town of Conway in North
Wales, Roger, aged 2¼, the son of Gervase the castle cook, went missing.
His father had gone that evening to a vigil in church for a funeral. Gervase
lived a stone’s throw from the castle: he had left at home Denise, his wife,
and Wenthliana, a servant from the castle. Roger was swaddled in the
cradle, and Gervase’s two daughters, Agnes, aged 7, and Ysolda, aged 9,
were together in bed. After Gervase had left the house, perhaps the time it
took one to walk three miles, his wife and Wenthliana also went out, leaving
the children asleep. They too went to the church, which was close at hand.
They did not lock the door of the house, nor secure it in any other way; it
was normally barred from the inside, but this was impracticable if the adults
were to get back in. Gervase’s wife and the maid stayed in the church for
much of the night; but Gervase returned home and found the door open, the
girls in bed asleep, and no sign of Roger. The cloth in which he was
swaddled was there along with his clothes. Thinking Roger had left the
house, Gervase looked for him in the area round about; but his neighbors,
who had been in bed for a long time, knew nothing of Roger. Still believing
a neighbor had taken his son in, Gervase returned to the church and told his
wife he could not find Roger. Gervase stayed in church until the middle of
the night, but became increasingly troubled and returned home to look for
Roger with a light. He could not find him at home, nor in the street, nor
elsewhere. It was very late, and as he did not wish to wake more of the
neighbors, he returned to church and waited for sunrise. The next morning,
going to the castle, the constable asked him where he had been: Gervase
replied that he had been in church all night watching at a funeral, to which
the constable answered that he had watched badly, as his son lay dead in the
castle ditch. The child had apparently set out to follow his father to work, as
was his habit, but the castle drawbridge was raised and in the dark he had
fallen into the dry moat. The coroners had been summoned, had examined
the body and were making their formal inquisition with a jury a little way
away when John Syward, a burgess of Conway, also climbed down into the
ditch and felt the body. John took a penny out of his purse and made the
sign of the cross on Roger’s forehead, asking St. Thomas Cantilupe to work
a miracle for the resuscitation of Roger, vowing that a pilgrimage would be
made on foot to the saint’s tomb at Hereford. The burgess saw Roger’s
tongue move a little in his open mouth, and said so to the coroners and
others who were standing around, and that it was a miracle. After a short
while, the child moved his right arm. The coroners halted their inquest and
gave the naked body back to the child’s mother. Warmed by the fire, more
signs of life appeared. Later in the day, Roger was talking and happy, just as
before.
In this tale we can recognize every parent’s nightmare, but the response
and the implications of the sensory environment are of another time: the
belief in miracles, the power of saints, religious signs, words, and John
Syward’s penny are typically medieval. The intimate life of a household in
this town, the domestic interior and the open house, the sleeping
arrangements and bed attire, the darkness and quietness of the town at
night, the proximity of neighbors and relationships with them, the place of
work, ideas about time, and attitudes to the dead—or those who might not
be—in this English enclave in North Wales were recorded by a clerk some
four years later in the depositions made before the commissioners inquiring
into the sanctity of Thomas Cantilupe. The record has therefore been
mediated, but with this understanding, it is a vignette of daily—and sensory
—life (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4015, fols. 189r–203v).
Books of etiquette were mostly aimed at children who were likely to
experience the great household at a social level somewhat above that of the
children of Gervase the cook. The Babees Book, a text of around 1475 (like
many of these works, written in verse, the more easily for its precepts to be
memorized), set out how the young should behave, emphasizing the virtues
of courtesy, measured movement, managing the body and the gaze, and
avoiding idle chatter:

A, Bele Babees, herkne now to my lore!

Whenne yee entre into your lordis place,
Say first, “God spede”; and alle that ben byfore
Yow in this stede, salue withe humble face;
Stert nat rudely; komme inne an esy pace;
Holde up youre heede, and knele but on oone kne
To youre sovereyne or lorde, whedir he be.

And yf they speke withe yow at youre komynge,

Withe stable eye loke upone theym rihte,
To theyre tales and yeve yee goode herynge
Whils they have seyde; loke eke withe alle your myhte
Yee iangle nouhte, also caste nouhte your syhte
Aboute the hous, but take to theym entent
Withe blythe vysage, and spiryt diligent.
Furnivall 1868: 3

Other texts put emphasis on the virtues of cleanliness of hands and nails,
cutting bread rather than breaking it, not putting fingers into dishes of food,
avoiding picking the nose or ears and scratching, not cleaning food from
one’s teeth with a knife, not spitting at table, nor putting elbows or fists on
the table, avoiding belching, eating with one’s mouth closed and without
greed, especially when the cheese was served, not throwing bones on the
floor, and not playing with spoon, trencher, or knife (Furnivall 1868: 16–
25).
 Sensory discipline is also apparent in household regulations. These
typically aimed to create an environment focused on the honor and profit of
the lord, and in this sensory impact was an important consideration. One
hazard was noise. The household regulations of Abbot Wenlok of
Westminster, probably compiled between 1295 and 1298, had a particular
concern with the grooms (garcons) of the household. Typically adolescents
—in an all-male household—there was considerable potential for disruption
to the dignity of the establishment. The household marshal was to ensure
that the grooms came into the hall to eat in one group, after the abbot was
seated, that they were all served, and that they then all served the cheese.
After the meal, they were not to hang about the entrance to the hall, nor in
the domestic departments (the pantry, buttery, and kitchen—presumably
looking to graze on any food that might come their way), but were to return
to their horses without the crowd making a noisy disturbance. This did not
mean that the abbot’s meals were silent affairs: whereas in the monastery
the monks ate in silence, accompanied by a reading—aimed at edifying
them and at distracting them from the pleasures of food—the abbot ate in
his own establishment much like a secular lord, with a full great household
and without many of the restrictions that faced the convent. While the meal
was doubtless a decorous affair, visiting minstrels were present in hall and
may have performed there (Harvey 1965: 243).
Besides the taste of food, carefully controlled and regulated in the great
household too, there were other sensory aspects of the establishment that
would have struck the observer, such as uniformity of dress. In England,
household staff and the lord’s servants were dressed in livery, that is, in
cloth of the same suit that was issued to them typically on two occasions in
the year, in summer and winter, although lesser servants would have
received only one issue. The household rules prepared by Robert
Grosseteste for the Countess of Lincoln, c. 1245–53, required the knights
and gentlemen of the countess’ household to wear each day the robes that
they had been given, especially when the countess ate and in her presence,
for the maintenance of her honor, and not old tabards, soiled overcoats, or
disreputable short coats (Oschinsky 1971: 402–3; Woolgar 2006: 190–266).
SENSORY MARKERS OF GENDER AND CLASS
Medieval society was hierarchical: in making patent the many dividing
lines, between class, estate, and gender, sensory markers were particularly
important. From livery through to patterns of clothing more generally,
enshrined in sumptuary legislation, from heraldry to the branding of
criminals or forcing heretics to wear a badge depicting a bundle of faggots
and Jews one depicting the tablets of their law, all produced signs that gave
a relatively unnuanced indication of standing and gender (Piponnier and
Mane 1997). One should not forget the medieval understanding that the sign
might shape the individual: there could be no doubt that a heretic was a
heretic, not only because he had been branded with an “H,” but also
because that sign constituted him a heretic. Other distinctions were more
subtle: the quality of livery cloth, for example, distinguished rank. At the
court of Savoy, under Duke Louis (1444–7), the principal clothing of the
court was grey and black, a color marking out humility; but it was a very
fine, dense black, the result of technical developments, much as was to be
found at the court of Burgundy, and the quality of each tier in the household
was marked by the grade of cloth. For all the humility it implied, it was a
costly fabric: sumptuary legislation in Italy had contributed to its
development there from the twelfth century (Page 1993: 65, 127–8). Black
might also mark out the widow, and white the virgin; and measured sobriety
in clothing was expected of all (Francis [1942] 1968: 239–40, 251–3, 285–
6). The association between striped cloth and prostitution was widespread
in medieval Europe (Pastoureau 2001). Costume change in late medieval
morality plays was used as a dramatic device to indicate spiritual change in
the character (Forest-Hill 2000: 93–4). Garments of the clergy were not to
be ostentatious: ecclesiastical councils across Europe in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, from Agde, Melfi, and Westminster, for example,
repeatedly enjoined the clergy to wear clothing of a single color and
appropriate footwear (Whitelock et al. 1981, 2: 676, 749, 778). Archbishop
Chichele outlined the position elegantly in his constitutions for the hospital
of Brackley in Northamptonshire, in 1425: “Moreover, for outward dress
often by its form demonstrates cleanliness of life and gives an example of
the pursuit of devotion to those who are desirous to hear divine service, the
master of the hospital, chaplains, clerks and those ministering at divine
service … may be clothed honestly in white surplices” (Thompson 1914:
18–19). There were also deliberate inversions, the rejection of high-quality
goods and clothing by those setting aside the riches of the world. The poor
in Christ were expected to dress accordingly. We have descriptions of
clothing designed to induce self-mortification, hair shirts invariably
unchanged, worn by high-ranking and saintly ecclesiastics such as Edmund
of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1240), under the clothes
normally worn by the episcopate (Lawrence 1960: 187–92).
Gentility was marked by a whole series of practices in relation to
cleanliness and odor. Typical are those that relate to the washing practices
around mealtimes—there was a separate household department in some
establishments, the ewery, charged with maintaining the vessels for
washing. In elite households, the vessels that were used were frequently
made of silver and were part of a public routine: they were intended to be
seen. Elaborate aquamaniles were used for this purpose; there were also
ewers and basins, often found in pairs in English inventories (Woolgar
2011: 165).
 An aquamanile, from Lower Saxony, c. 1200–50.
FIGURE 1.1:
Photograph: Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Patterns were a little different elsewhere in Europe. There were special

vessels for washing on other occasions: inventories list basins for washing
the head and hands, and also for shaving. The last appear among the goods
of thirteenth-century cardinals: Goffredo d’Alatri had a silver basin for
shaving; Luca Fieschi had three of different sizes, one of silver gilt
(Brancone 2009: 68n, 90, 173). Expensive perfumes distinguished both
women and men of high rank. Pomanders—literally a pomme d’ambre, that
is, of ambregris, a sweetly scented secretion of the sperm whale—and musk
balls were carried by those of high rank, and in royal circles these contained
the perfumed element within a construction of gold and jewels. The
possessions of Charles VI of France, inventoried in 1400, included a series
of pomanders in the study at the Bois de Vincennes, one of which was
decorated with the arms of Pope Clement and had presumably been a gift
(Henwood 2004: 158–9).
 Medieval people were interested in things being clean for the sake of
honor, dignity, and purity: washing may have had a hygienic effect as well.
Cleanliness and pleasant odor were signs of virtue, which might project
themselves through the senses to others. The Virgin Mary was likened to a
spicer’s shop for its sweet odour: “For as a spicer’s shop smells sweet of
divers spices, so she was sweet for the presence of the Holy Ghost that was
in her and the abundance of virtues that she had” (Mirk 2009–11, 2: 223).
Even if, in the countryside, people washed in streams and children
splashed in rivers, bathing was an unusual occurrence. At an elite level,
bathing was a special affair and took place on important occasions, perhaps
as an indicator of purification, prior to marriage, or before the dubbing of a
knight. The aim seems to have been to create something like a Turkish bath,
with a tent of sheets surrounding the bather, and spices and herbs (Thornton
1991: 246, 316–17). We should note that bathing did not necessarily imply
the person taking the bath was naked, although this was clearly the case in
many examples. There were also public baths—commonly associated with
licentiousness (Carlin 1996: 211)—where bathing was an activity that
might be shared by the sexes. Over 1292–3, witnesses were examined in a
matrimonial suit between Alice La Marescal and Elias of Suffolk. Elias
claimed that he could not marry Alice, as he had had carnal knowledge of
one of her blood relatives, Christine de Thorley. This took place at a
common bathing place—possibly owned by a barber—near the Tower of
London, at about the third hour of the day, on the Wednesday after Easter
week, 1289 (although some said this happened after noon, but also that
Elias and Christine were often to be seen there). Witnesses for Elias recalled
that they had seen him bathing with Christine in a tub, and also in a little
chamber beside the bath, where it was clear they were naked, in bed, having
sex. Others saw this too, including some who were in nearby beds (Adams
and Donhue 1981: 356–61).
It is perhaps inevitable that there was a reaction against cleanliness and
softness of all kinds. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were to find an
inappropriate effeminacy in this, with fine clothing, bedding, and washing
routines a symbol of degeneracy (Owst 1933: 411–13).
Distinctions flowing from gender created a separate sphere of sensory
practice and life for women, especially in areas of domestic life and some
categories of work in the later medieval period. In England, women are
found engaged in the retail food trades and special food practices, as well as
doing the daily shopping. If male chefs were responsible for cooking in elite
establishments, demotic cookery was overwhelmingly in the hands of
women. It is women that we see involved in accidents associated with
cookery and food preparation in villages and towns. We can also see them
involved with food preservation and the preparation of meat, as pudding
wives, washing and preparing entrails; they tended gardens and worked
with herbs; they brewed and made special drinks such as mead; they were
dairy servants par excellence; we find women and their children engaged in
gathering nuts, berries, and other foodstuffs (Carlin 2008; Woolgar 2010).
Less positively, but of equal importance for the experience of women,
was a quasi-mysogynistic strand in medieval Christianity that saw women
as a potential source of contamination, as a distraction to men, and an
excitement to base lusts. Many clerics felt it completely inappropriate for
them to be in situations where they might see women, touch them or kiss
them—even their own sisters. Women were excluded from areas where they
might have any contact with men, or with ecclesiastical goods. Laundresses
were sometimes tolerated, or were allowed to collect clothing for washing
at the gate of the establishment; but often washermen were used. Even in
the aristocratic great household, women were regarded with suspicion and
largely excluded: the exceptions were the ladies of the lord’s immediate
family, their personal companions, and servants for their bodies and
clothing. The consequence of this was to be found architecturally, with the
segregation of women’s apartments. This also finds its witness in schemes
of decoration in elite residences: the female part of the great house had
different themes, as at Henry III’s palace at Clarendon in Wiltshire. Other
elements of female sensory experience are to be found in clothing and
personal adornment: at an elite level, a range of expensive textiles and
jewels, and special work associated with them, for example, embroidery or
work with silk. The male/female division in terms of clothing was well
recognized and incidents of cross-dressing provoked disquiet (Richardson
2003; Woolgar 2006: 100, 227–9).
 THE SENSES WITHIN THE HOME AND
CLOISTER
If sensory routines marked out the individual, they also marked out the
domestic environment for largely the same reasons. The emphasis on
cleanliness and virtue found a reflection in practice, although virtue may
not have been its only motivation. For example, we find attention given to
the cleanliness of floors. Miracle stories and sermon exempla depict the
virtuous peasant woman sweeping out her house, removing waste straw and
the detritus from poultry and animals. One feature was a ritual spring-clean
coinciding with the point in the year that the soul was shriven, at Easter.
Mirk’s Festial, a popular collection of Middle English sermons derived
“Easter” (“Astur”) from aster, a hearth: Easter marked the end of winter,
the day when fire was taken out of the house, and the hearth, which had
burned all winter and blackened the building with smoke, was to be strewn
with green rushes and sweet flowers round about, as an example to men and
women to make clean the house of the soul, doing away with the fire of
lechery, deadly wrath, and envy, strewing instead sweet herbs and flowers
(Mirk 2009–11, 1: 114–15; 2: 351). By the late fourteenth century, popular
accounts of the household of St. Thomas Becket (d. 1170) reported that his
hall was newly strewn each day in summer with green rushes and in winter
with clean hay, in order to protect the clothing of the knights who had to sit
on the floor because of lack of space on the benches (Mirk 2009–11, 1: 39).
There were other concerns as well. The sacrist of Westminster Abbey, from
the evidence of the customary of 1266, was to put down matting in the choir
and in chapter, before the altars, on steps, and so forth, to be renewed
annually. Throughout the church, where the floor was not paved, and
especially in the presbytery, he was to strew rushes or hay on all the
principal feasts and whenever else it was necessary. On the vigils of
Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity, the choir floor was to be covered with
rushes and ivy leaves. The oratory was to be strewn with rushes between
Easter and All Saints, and then with hay until Easter. It was especially to be
noted that nothing other than rushes from the salt marsh were to be used for
the choir or oratory, lest the stench arising from the excessive moisture of
other rushes corrupt the air for the monks prostrate on the choir floor. At the
same time as the sacrist was looking after the church, the abbey’s almoner
was to strew the cloister and the parlor, and the infirmarer was to strew the
infirmary chapel (Thompson 1902–4, 2: 50–1). We also find mention of
cleaning routines: in the 1330s, the chamberlain of St. Augustine’s,
Canterbury, was to keep a bucket with a holy water sprinkler in the
dormitory—presumably against accidents that would require not only
cleanliness but the decorum of sanctity that might be restored by the holy
water. The dormitory was to be cleaned and swept from top to bottom at
least once a year. Provision was also to be made for bedstraw to be changed
at the same interval (Thompson 1902–4, 1: 195).
Floor coverings might also denote honor. The use of textiles, especially
carpets, was a mark of distinction. Textile hangings and drapes in secular
contexts appear to have been a southern European fashion—fine textiles,
especially silks, were more abundant in the Mediterranean world, the focus
of trade from the East—that came to northern Europe with the marriage of
queens and princesses of the thirteenth century onwards, one of the ways in
which sensory practices changed. The use of hangings of rich textiles was
the subject of sumptuary legislation.
Venetian regulations of 1476 prohibited the use of fine silks for domestic
hangings, but we may conclude from the repetition of the ordinances, and
the appearance of silks in paintings, that these injunctions were ignored.
Near Eastern silks were imitated in Italy, and Venice was a centre of
production (Monnas 2008: 148–79; Thornton 1991: 64–6, 68–72; Woolgar
2006: 223, 251–2).
 FIGURE 1.2: Detail of the Whore of Babylon, from the
Apocalypse cycle of tapestries at Angers, 1373–87.
Tapestries were prestigious wall-hangings. The subject here
aptly associates the moral consequences of softness and
personal luxury with perdition. Courtesy of Getty Images
(Image ID: 73217411).

Insulation against the cold was an important element with some of these
floor coverings, but their use was also about prestige: to cover bare earth,
even with a wooden floor, was particularly effective. The addition of rushes,
especially of matting, would also have made a material difference; the use
of textiles of any sort established the superior quality of the establishment.
These coverings would have had an effect on the soundscape of the house,
dulling the noise of feet, dampening conversation. Within the household
environment more generally there were other areas that needed attention.
Rooms might have several purposes: from the principal chamber of the
manor, a scene for eating, sleeping and living, to the peasant house, where
cooking might be added to this list. In institutions, there might be separate
dormitories, kitchens and privies. The kitchens, conventionally likened to
hell, for their noise and smell, were often set apart, one imagines partly due
to the risk of fire. Sensory behavior in these areas was guided by general
and communal norms.
FIGURE 1.3:The abbot’s kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey, fi rst
half of the fourteenth century. Kitchens in high-class
establishments were often constructed as free-standing
buildings, separating the risk of fi re, unpleasant odors, and
noise from other areas of the domestic environment. It was
not for nothing that kitchens and cooks were associated with
hell. Photograph: C. M. Woolgar.
 COMMUNAL AND PRIVATE PRACTICES OR
RITUALS INVOLVING THE SENSES
Even in the most prestigious establishment—perhaps especially in the most
prestigious establishments—the notion of “private life” is misplaced. This
was all public living: in places, the environment may have been more
intimate, but it was not private in the modern sense. We can see something
of this in regard to what we might consider the most private of functions. It
is readily apparent from the evidence of standing buildings that latrines and
privies were sometimes communal: in a great household, or institutional
environment, this appears to have been usual practice. Monks visiting the
latrines of the reredorter might be required to wear their hoods down
completely over their faces: this might be a communal space, but regard had
to be had for others. They were not to say prayers there, lest the sacred
word be defiled. Only the old and infirm were to have urinals in the
dormitory (Thompson 1902–4, 1: 186, 194). In the great household,
servants of the lord’s body would have been present at the most intimate of
functions—and to be present at this point was a mark of the honor in which
one was held. The use of close stools and urinals meant that neither the lord
nor lady had to leave their chamber for the common house of easement
(Thornton 1991: 245, 248, 298). Attempts to control smell and the
contagion of bad air led to the careful placing of privies, in angles of walls
in castles for example, and the introduction of positive smells, particularly
from perfumes, good odors to counteract the bad. Elaborate perfume
burners are found across Europe at an elite level (Thornton 1991: 249–50;
Woolgar 2006: 136, 264–5).
Daily routines can be established from household regulations and
monastic customaries. In terms of washing, for example, we can see that in
the 1330s a Benedictine monk of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, was to
wash his hands each morning when the monks came down from the
dormitory and when the convent went to the main meal, lunch (prandium).
The same was to happen in summer after the middle of the day sleep, when
the monks left the dormitory, and after lunch from mid-October to Easter,
except that they were first to sit in cloister for the space of De profundis and
a collect. They were also to wash their hands after supper, when they left
the dormitory after changing their footwear. Detailed variation throughout
the year was documented: for example, when there was no supper, but a
drink, monks were also to wash before the drink; they were to wash when
the convent had to dress again for mass, in albs or copes. Feet were to be
washed in cloister every Saturday throughout the year, except when a
principal feast fell on a Saturday or Sunday, in which case the washing was
to take place the preceding Thursday. The under-chamberlain was to
prepare two tubs with hot water, and to bring them and four basins into the
cloister, along with a tub containing cloths. When feet were to be washed,
monks were to keep their faces covered as far down as the nose. Shaving
took place in cloister, in principle with one brother to shave another; but
because many did not know how to do this, the under-chamberlain was to
provide four secular servants who were skilled in this art. In winter, shaving
was to take place once a fortnight; in summer, twice in every three weeks.
The under-chamberlain again was to provide hot water, basins, and cloths.
A monk would expect to bath twice a year, at Christmas and Whitsun (it had
been four times a year, but it was agreed that the Benedictine Rule did not
grant that it should be used more readily except by the sick and infirm:
bathing was not to be undertaken for enjoyment, but for curative purposes)
(Thompson 1902–4, 1: 200–1, 214–17).
Practices relating to courtship and marriage had a range of sensory
resonances. At the highest level, there was extensive ceremonial
accompanying princesses who traveled abroad for marriage, with
sumptuous trousseaux and furnishings. Edward II’s queen, Isabella of
France, went to her grave in 1358 wrapped in the red silk tunic and mantle
in which she had been married fifty years before. Marriage was not
necessarily an event that required anything more than words of present or
future consent—there was a widespread tradition of extra-ecclesiastical
marriage in late medieval England—nor did it require witnesses beyond the
couple. Speech created the act. Marriages were accompanied by the mutual
clasping of hands: “handfasting,” mutual touch, was recorded commonly by
witnesses, as was the presence of garlands and sometimes an exchange of
rings, although these might even be of straw rather than gold.
 FIGURE 1.4: A gold finger ring, with a sapphire and garnet,
from c. 1400, possibly English or French. The inscription in
this ring reads “oue tout mon coer” (with all my heart). The
words of love, physically touching the wearer, would have
brought a special power with them. Photograph: Courtesy of
the Victoria and Albert Museum, M.189–1962.

No special attire was expected in an age which saw few people with
several sets of garments. Lucy, the wife of Richard the ploughman, attested
in 1270 to a marriage between Adam Attebure and Matilda de la Leye in the
middle of a field called “le Ridinge,” near Luton, Bedfordshire, seven years
earlier. The parties had exchanged vows in the afternoon, and Lucy had
been there with Matilda’s sister, but no others. Adam was wearing a tunic of
russet and a supertunic, and Matilda a robe of burnet, a middle-grade
woolen cloth. In a marriage of around 1200, between Alice, niece of Ralph
the baker, and John, a blacksmith, which took place in the chancel of the
church of Fenchurch, London, witnesses recorded that they gave faith by
clasping each others’ hands. John was dressed in a blue cloak and Alice in
John’s cape of blue cloth. Other elements that occur regularly are the
holding of a pall over bride and groom—in a ceremony at church—and a
feast (Adams and Donahue 1981: 19–28, 120–2; Woolgar 2006: 235).

PUNISHMENT AND THE SENSES

The repertoire of medieval punishment was closely aligned to the moral
code of sensation. Corporal punishment, mutilation, and execution were
common practices. Given that to be considered fully human required
possession of all the sensory faculties, these punishments brought a
remarkable degradation of the individual. Severing limbs, cutting off ears,
putting out eyes, castration, punishments short of death, as well as the
lengthy and drawn out punishments that culminated in death, deprived the
individual of sensory faculties without which they were not considered fully
human and placed them in an obvious state of moral purdah. These
punishments were deliberately painful and shaming. Punishment took place
in public, typically in the most important spaces available to a community, a
marketplace or busy thoroughfare, in church, chapter house, or refectory, or
at the boundaries of a community, to expose the delinquent to the maximum
degree of humiliation, to make plain the moral degeneracy of the
malefactor. The dress of the miscreant marked them out: in many instances
offenders were partially clothed; in some, they were naked. When in 1339
Robert Bassage was found to have committed adultery, he was sentenced to
be beaten six times round his parish church and six times round the
marketplace at Lincoln in a shift (camisa), with crosses hanging from his
neck. When he re-offended, he was punished in a similar way, but he was to
be naked (Poos 2001: 71–2). Corporal and capital punishments were
devised with the intention of inflicting pain: moral retribution was exacted
on earth in anticipation of the torments that the wicked would suffer both on
earth and eternally; it also demonstrated the status of the offender (Flint
2000). In 1511, a heretic, Julian Hilles of Tenterden, was confined to a
nunnery just outside Canterbury and for the remainder of her life was not to
go further afield than the suburbs of that city without the dispensation of the
archbishop. She had a further, irritating reminder of her crime: she was
prohibited from wearing linen underclothes for the remainder of her life,
not just on Fridays (Tanner 1997: 109).
In ecclesiastical courts, punishments segregated individuals, ensured they
undertook additional religious rites, saying cycles of the psalms and so
forth, undergoing additional periods of fasting, in some instances for the
rest of a malefactor’s life. The penitents were typically to perform their
penance barefoot—and, equally, the physical travails that came from
pilgrimages that were made barefoot gave greater benefit to the participants.
Excommunication was the most serious punishment: to be set physically
and morally outside the communion of the church deprived the individual
of all the benefits of Christianity—from the consumption of food that had
been blessed through to denial of burial in consecrated ground and the
sensory protection these both gave. The physical torments of hell were
never far from the mind of medieval man. In the late twelfth century, a lay
brother of the Cistercian monastery of Stratford Langthorne was received
back into the community after a period of apostasy. He was not, however,
allowed to wear the full habit of a lay brother. He died and was buried
without the habit. The abbot of the monastery, who was overseas, had a
vision of him in hell with his hair and clothing burnt. The lay brother
explained to the abbot that one of his punishments was to walk beneath a
blazing and bubbling cauldron, out of holes in which burning drops of
pitch, sulfur, and lead had fallen on his head and his clothing. The abbot
arranged for the body to be exhumed and reburied, this time with the body
in the habit of a lay brother—and a little while after the abbot had another
vision of the unfortunate, but this time in glory with the full protection of
the habit (Holdsworth 1962: 196–7).

CONCLUSION
The medieval patterns of social life and sensation were very different to our
experience. Texts aimed at morality and socialization show us that every
action and perception might be endowed with connotations of virtue or ill-
repute. Individuals, their body and clothing, and their immediate domestic
environment, were all scrutinized for the qualities they gave out, signifiers
of social standing. The senses were the gateways to the soul. Pleasant odors,
patterns of speech, and bodily movement all betrayed and conveyed its
qualities. The sensorium extended to and was affected by qualities of
objects and beings round about them.
Perception was not a constant, however. Changes in the intellectual
understanding of sensation, particularly in the development of doubt in the
later Middle Ages, of reasoned connection, and the gradual closing of the
body to external influence and a new rationale for its own influences on
others, were important in the long term, although their impact was muted
until the Enlightenment. Here one might point to heretics, who did not
believe in the power of miracles or holy statues, let alone the Eucharist, and
to Protestant reform and its insistence on the understanding of the Word,
rather than the impact of sacred sound. There were also broad changes
which must have a connection to perception, even if we cannot pinpoint the
links: the use of perspective and a growth in realism in art, the availability
of more lighting, variety in diet, and complexity in sound and music
(Milner 2011; Pearsall and Salter 1973: 161; Woolgar 2006). All these were
to have important consequences for the social life of the individual.
 CHAPTER TWO
_____________________________________

Urban Sensations: The

Medieval City Imagined
KATHRYN REYERSON

A famous exemplum (morality tale) by the theologian Jacques de Vitry

depicts the experience of a peasant bringing his donkeys through the street
of the spice merchants in medieval Montpellier. Before a shop where
apprentices were grinding herbs and spices with mortar and pestle, the
peasant fainted from the unfamiliar odors. A shovelful of manure was
sufficient to rouse him from his faint. The moral of the story concerned the
problems of removing someone from his familiar element (Jacques de Vitry
1890: 80; Luchaire [1912] 1967: 398). On a subtler level, olfactory
symbolism could be used to express and enforce class distinctions. Peasants
were considered too crude to appreciate the finer things in life. The smells
were strong but very different in town and country, and the elixirs and
spiced wine that were specialties of the Montpellier apothecary industry,
exported far and wide in Europe, were clearly more sophisticated than those
the peasant was accustomed to (Dion 1959).
There were sensory distinctions to be made between the urban and rural
environments of medieval Europe. From north to south and particularly in
the continental plains of the north, cities with their churches dominated the
countryside visually. As one approaches Chartres, southwest of Paris, by
train or car today, the cathedral still looms above the modern town. A
medieval inhabitant on the Beauce plain would have seen Chartres
cathedral for miles as he walked or rode toward the town. Medieval urban
inhabitants rose and retired to the sound of church bells. The bustle of
markets, the droning of trades, the metallic strokes of the blacksmith’s
anvil, the foul odors of butchers’ slaughterhouses, the stench of the tanners’
trade, the pollution of river waters, and sewage running down the center of
streets accosted the urban visitor. By contrast, the rural environment was
punctuated by the cacophony of the barnyard and courtyard, the pungent
smells of animals and their noises, the sounds of nature in the fields, woods,
and streams. Rural life presented a more bucolic and peaceful, though no
less provocative assault on the senses, but the sights, sounds, smells, tastes,
and targets for the sense of touch were different in the city.
In an effort to imagine the medieval city, it is useful to bring the urban
environment to life through a consideration of sensory experience.1 The
topic of urban sensations is worthy of investigation in a broader sense
because it provides an avenue of access to an earlier time to which we can
all relate on some level. We share the same sensory equipment of medieval
inhabitants, even if we might not today speak of something like “the odor of
sanctity” or develop each sense in the same way as dwellers in medieval
cities did. On a broad canvas of urban sensations, it is my intent to examine
the sights, smells, sounds, texture, and tastes that filled the environment of
medieval cities across Western Europe in the High and Late Middle Ages (c.
1000–1500 CE).
The heyday of medieval urban development in Europe falls in the period
after 1000 CE. While cities did not disappear when the Roman Empire
collapsed in the West (c. 476 CE), urban environments ceased to be the
central cultural and institutional focus of the barbarian kingdoms that
succeeded Rome. With the takeoff of the medieval economy in the eleventh
century, following a revival beginning earlier, population grew in earnest
(Lopez 1976). Over the next three centuries cities became larger, more
urban and less rural, though a portion of the medieval urban population
always worked in the fields around the towns. These developments affected
the trajectory of urban sensations. Over time, cities were more densely
inhabited with the crush of population accentuating the impact of urban
sensory experience. Cities of Roman or earlier origin revived, and new
towns of rectangular and circular formats were planted (Lilley 2002). There
is certainly an element of change over time in the impact of the sights,
smells, sounds, textures, and tastes of medieval urban life. Change was
gradual in the case of population growth, but sensory experience would be
affected by significant crises, wars, disease and plague, along with social
unrest, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Miskimin 1975).
To guide us, this journey through the medieval centuries in search of
urban sensations is usefully undertaken in the company of one of the most
observant of medievals, a merchant. The merchant’s ability to determine
quality was predicated on his senses of sight, taste, smell, and touch, and his
acumen in business relied heavily on hearing (and over-hearing) market
details that made or broke a deal, that increased the likelihood of profit. E
scarso comperare et largo venda was the merchant motto, to buy cheap and
sell dear (Balducci Pegolotti 1936: 20). Quality was also an issue. The
details of merchant manuals make clear the keen powers of observation that
were required of a merchant (Balducci Pegolotti 1936; Lopez and Raymond
1955: 341–58). As towns developed greater autonomy from territorial
powers, merchants ran the municipal governments. Robert Lopez was fond
of saying that town government was of the merchants, by the merchants,
and for the merchants, a kind of business enterprise (Lopez 1967: 266–70).
The merchant, an urban figure par excellence, was often in movement from
town to town and thus he is a convenient guide to urban sensations across
the European landscape.
Visually, the medieval city was marked not only by its churches but in all
likelihood by its walls. Like the cathedral, the walls were visible from afar
as the merchant approached the town. The view of Aigues Mortes, St.
Louis’s crusading port in southern France (Figure 2.1), shows an approach
at close range from the Mediterranean. The merchant would have been
ferried there with his wares in a small craft that could navigate the lagoons
and the shifting streams that led to the inland port. His ship had to be off-
loaded at the coast. Medieval urban walls could be of Roman origin, with
the lower traces reflecting Roman brickwork (appareil). They might be of
twelfth- or thirteenth-century origin, in which case there may have been
crenellations (as at Carcassonne, enhanced in their present state by the
nineteenth-century architectural historian Viollet-le-Duc), arrow slits, or
loop-holes as at Beaumaris castle in Wales, or towers of circular shape, as at
Angers (Viollet-le-Duc 1990: 195). The walls of Aigues Mortes were
constructed in the thirteenth century; they are well preserved and mercifully
unrestored by Viollet-le-Duc. The town itself was laid out in symmetrical
fashion in a rectangular format since it was a planned town (Jehel 1985).
 FIGURE 2.1: City walls, Aigues Mortes. Photograph: Kathryn
Reyerson.

At Montpellier the fortifications ran 3,762 meters, with eleven main gates
and additional minor entrances. Only two towers of these walls remain
standing today. Figure 2.2 shows one of these towers, the Tour des Pins,
which housed the municipal archives until a new municipal library was
built in the late twentieth century. Along the inside of the walls of medieval
Montpellier ran an interior road called the Douze Pans. On the outside of
the fortifications there was another road called the Douve (Fabre and
Lochard 1992). It was key for urban defenders to be able to move troops
along these paths. But, typically, at Montpellier and elsewhere, the walls
were encumbered inside by housing, while outside the walls urban trades
used the ditches for their work, creating tensions between urban authorities
and inhabitants; rope makers spread their cords in the ditches and wood
merchants their lumber (Reyerson 2000).
 City wall tower, La Tour des Pins, Montpellier.
FIGURE 2.2:
Photograph: Kathryn Reyerson.

Night and day were undoubtedly lived differently in town and country,
but when night fell, the darkness was all-pervasive, broken only by torches
or candles. Medieval inhabitants were uneasy in the dark—bad things
happened at night, and evil folk circulated under cover of darkness.
Medieval trades usually required work to cease when light diminished; the
quality of production could decline in dim lighting. Summer work hours
were longer, but in winter darkness came early, particularly in northern
Europe. People did move around at night, the merchant with cronies going
from inn to alehouse, young men on a lark with torches. Oil lamps were
used to light holy images in Italian towns, for example; there might be the
occasional candle as well, but when dusk fell, darkness descended (Frugoni
2005: 27).
City gates would be closed at night for reasons of safety. The night watch
was a feature of many medieval towns. Night watchmen patrolled the
streets of the small German town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, for instance.
In thirteenth-century London (Kowaleski 2008: 341) beadles summoned
two good men from their wards to take up the watch at the gates, arriving in
daytime and departing at daylight. They were to be armed. The London
Midsummer Watch was an elaborate affair to supervise Midsummer’s Eve
revelry surrounding the feasts of Saint John the Baptist (24 June) and Saints
Peter and Paul (29 June). The guilds and the aldermen, comprising
prominent merchants, dispatched armed marchers to control the main
streets during the civic festivals (Lindenbaum 1994). Beyond this type of
ceremonial watch, night watches were common in medieval cities as there
was no municipal lighting. The association of darkness, sin, and the vices
provided an allegorical dimension to night. Further, darkness connected
with plague emerges from its associations in the book of Exodus. In
contrast, light was associated with knowledge and revelation.
The medieval merchant cared about accuracy, and time has always been
money. In thirteenth-century Genoese notarial acts recording a merchant’s
contracts, the date was documented but so was the hour (Lopez and
Raymond 1955: 183). The hours of the day and night were usually marked
by bells. The hours, which we often think of as monastic, were noted at
three-hour intervals—matins came at midnight and then every three hours,
lauds, prime about 6 a.m., terce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline
followed. There were twelve divisions of the 24 hours, but these were not
always uniform as there were no mechanisms to ensure precision, and even
the first clocks were irregular in this regard (Le Goff 1980).
In addition to governing religious hours and practice, bells in the highly
industrialized towns of the Low Countries, Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent, called
people to work and released them, much as factory sirens did from the time
of the Industrial Revolution (Hodgett 1972: 141). Sundials kept time for
millennia and water clocks existed previously, but the invention and
perfection of the mechanical clock with its escapement mechanism in the
thirteenth through fifteenth centuries led to municipal clocks on town halls
and in ecclesiastical establishments such as Canterbury Cathedral. The
mechanical clock at the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg struck the hours from
1509. The merchants of Nuremberg who reached prominence in the late
medieval centuries were undoubtedly well served. By contrast, the rooster
crowed and the sun rose to mark daybreak and awaken the rural inhabitant.
Within the walls of medieval towns that grew up ad hoc or spread from
an earlier Roman core, the merchant would encounter a maze of small
streets, some leading to a central square, a market or cathedral, or town hall
square. Space was at a premium. Limited perspectives were the result of
narrow streets—often irregular—not laid out on grids; passages were made
more asymmetric by the overhangs of houses.
Planned towns had symmetric layouts, often rectangles reminiscent of the
Roman castrum as at Aigues Mortes. In some cases they had a circular
format with concentric streets as at Bram in southwestern France. Stair
streets were also common when the urban topography varied in height, as at
Palma de Majorca or at Saint-Paul de Vence in Provence.
Movement was key to the merchant’s trade. In towns he circulated to find
clients and to dispense his wares. He connected with collaborators to further
his business. Meandering streets did provide some break from the winds. In
southern France the Mistral is only the most famous of a whole set of
winds. The Tramontane plagued northern Italian towns. Cold winds off the
Irish Sea must have buffeted the towns of Wales and western England while
the North Sea battered northern France and the Low Countries as the Baltic
did northern Germany and lands farther east. Arcades and porticos as well
as covered streets provided some shelter from the chill that must have
plagued every medieval inhabitant in winter.
An area of commonality between rural village and town was the amount
of time medieval inhabitants spent outside, in summer and winter. This was
certainly easier in Mediterranean climes, but winter rainfall threatened
those outdoors in southern Europe whereas England and the Low Countries
experienced rain and cloudy conditions in all seasons. In Italy people
crowded the streets from dawn to dusk. They frequented the cathedral
squares, the market squares, and the public piazze in front of the town hall
(Frugoni 2005). The medieval shopkeeper, a retail merchant, usually lived
where he worked. The front of his shop might accommodate a counter from
which the household’s wares were sold. People stood and chatted. They sat
on stone benches in large southern towns while in the Pyrenean village of
Montaillou inhabitants deloused each other outside, gossiping of heresy all
the while (Le Roy Ladurie 1978).
FIGURE 2.3:Limited perspective, Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val.
Photograph: Kathryn Reyerson.
 FIGURE 2.4:Stair street, Palma de Mallorca. Photograph:
Kathryn Reyerson.

Dazzling the merchant’s gaze, the medieval cathedral was a particularly

urban phenomenon, seat of the bishop or archbishop as head of the diocese.
The light metaphysics of Abbot Suger of St. Denis launched the remarkable
Gothic program that from the twelfth century on infused medieval
cathedrals with light. As Suger stated, “The entire sanctuary is thus
pervaded by a wonderful and continuous light entering through the most
sacred windows” (Simson 1956: 100). Suger worked with two principles,
luminosity and concordance of parts, in his design of Saint-Denis north of
Paris, the first Gothic cathedral. Cathedrals of Europe from c. 1140
dramatically reconfigured the role of light and color in the sanctuary. Light
streaming through the stained glass windows, the great rose windows in
particular, created patterns on the stone floor. The Gothic cathedral was an
urban masterpiece that graced episcopal and archiepiscopal sites. Our
merchant and urban inhabitants in general would undoubtedly have been in
awe of the kaleidoscope of hues that infused these holy spaces, particularly
perhaps in the case of the blue of Chartres’ stained glass.
 FIGURE 2.5:Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris. Photograph:
Kathryn Reyerson.

There was a thriving building industry in medieval towns to

accommodate the threefold population increase in Western Europe from the
eleventh to the late thirteenth century, and much of this growth was urban.
Overpopulation in the countryside along with economic opportunities in the
expanding towns caused much rural in-migration. This was the era of
cathedral construction, a process that often took upwards of 100 years. The
din of building, the hewing of stone by masons, the squeaking of pulleys
and windlasses, the clatter of tools, and the calls of workmen filled the
urban airways in the daytime. In some cases the speed of construction must
have multiplied the associated noises. In new towns, in planned towns, in
bastides, there was often an expectation that one-third of all housing be
finished in the first year, with the following years completing the process
(Hodgett 1972: 129).
The armature of cities inherited from Roman civilization was fragile, a
kind of veneer over what was otherwise a rural, agricultural world. Even in
the Merovingian period there is some evidence that urban population
density encouraged conflagrations since most building was in wood.
Gregory of Tours recounted that in 585 a woman predicted a fire at Paris,
and when people made fun of her, she replied that she had seen in a dream a
man coming from the basilica of Saint-Germain des Près holding a torch in
his hand and lighting fire to the merchants’ houses, all in a row. The
implication here is that the houses (perhaps with shops) sat side by side.
Bordeaux was completely destroyed by fire in 580, as was Orléans. During
the 585 fire at Paris (the woman’s prediction would appear to have come
true), part of one of the bridges over the Seine was destroyed (Gregory of
Tours 1974).
Fire damage was seen everywhere in mature medieval cities. Burnt-out
houses could be found on almost every street in the dense capitals. The
danger was real because people used fire to heat their homes and to cook.
Many trades worked with flammable materials—wool and ropes. Artisans
—bakers, potters, smiths, etc.—relied on fire in their work (Frugoni 2005:
155–9). Urban authorities cracked down on fires deliberately set. The
punishment for arson in Montpellier was the loss of the tongue (Pégat et al.
1840: 86). Cities continued to be vulnerable to fire throughout the Middle
Ages and later in the early modern and even modern periods. One need only
recall the Great Fire of London in 1666 that destroyed much of the city and
Saint Paul’s Cathedral or the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The merchant
risked losing goods stored in warehouses or in merchant shops, along with
his own house and perhaps his life.
Information was and is key to business. Clifford Geertz modeled the
preindustrial market after the Suq, and in Douglass North’s words, “In
essence, the name of the game is to raise the cost of transacting to the other
party to the exchange. One makes money by having better information than
the adversary” (North 1985: 564–5). Merchants were keenly aware of this
as the surviving commercial correspondence shows, exemplified in the
Datini letters (Origo 1957). Letters describe political, market, and climatic
conditions in detail. Sensory information could be vital because it reflected
the value of a product or the quality of the harvest.
In town, additional media existed. The town chronicle of Montpellier, an
official source of information for the town consulate comprised of
merchants and artisans, recorded brief political news from an early date and
until the thirteenth century focused local attention on the Hispanic world to
which Montpellier was linked. The chronicle also provided climatic news of
greater or lesser geographic scope, depending on the severity of the
phenomena, especially from the later thirteenth century on. In 1262, for
example, in the month of January, note was made of la gran neu (the great
snowfall) (Pégat et al. 1840: 336). In 1285, the sphere suddenly broadened
greatly with all of Christendom included in the commentary of a great
shortage of food and very expensive grain: fon per tot Crestianisma carestia
mortal, quar lo sestier de blat velia xx s. de torn (throughout Christendom
there was a mortal famine, with the setier of wheat valued at 20 sous
tournois) (Pégat et al. 1840: 339). With the fourteenth century the
references to climate and natural disaster increased: an earthquake in
Montpellier in 1309 on March 29; on August 21, an eclipse of the moon; a
flood of a tributary of the Lez River, causing damage to houses in the area
of Legassieu and the Trinity and some in the area of Saint Esprit. In 1313
drought was the order of the day: fo gran secaressa pertot (there was great
drought everywhere), with many processions organized, and finally with
surcease as the rain came: e Nostre Senhor donet plueja (and our Lord gave
rain) (Pégat et al. 1840: 344). Great drought came again in 1330, succeeded
by a flood of the Lez in 1331 with the drowning of 200 people. An eclipse
of the sun in May 1333 was followed by the poignant report for that year
that there was great scarcity and hunger, with young men, having eaten raw
herbs, dying in the streets. No grain was forthcoming from Lombardy or
Sicily because of the war with Genoa, or from Catalonia, but people got
some provisions from Burgundy and Venice (Pégat et al. 1840: 347). These
chronicle descriptions are terse but demonstrate the sensory impact of
climate events.
Curiously, there was much concern in the Montpellier town chronicle for
the bells of Notre-Dame des Tables, the renowned pilgrimage church
around which moneychangers clustered. In 1309 on Christmas Eve, the
large bell made by M. Anthony was placed in the bell tower of Notre-Dame
des Tables (Pégat et al. 1840: 344). In 1325 it was reported that a middle-
sized bell was made for Notre-Dame; it broke on All Saints’ Day in 1337
(Pégat et al. 1840: 346). As it turns out, these bells were rung to assemble
the local population. During the political and social crisis in Montpellier in
the 1320s the population was summoned on numerous occasions by the
sound of the large bell (Combes 1972).
Bells were undoubtedly the common method of transmitting information
to a medieval urban population en masse. Attacks would have been
announced via bells. Fires as well. Bells pierced the day and the night with
different chimes, usually of warning or summons. Lepers jingled little bells
or castanets to warn the inhabitants of their coming. Physical repulsion
could be occasioned from the stench of their wounds or from the
disfiguration caused by the leprosy itself (Frugoni 2005: 77).
Without newspapers and electronic media, town criers were another
source of news and official pronouncements. Mass dissemination of news
came through town criers who proclaimed announcements of all kinds. In
Montpellier the urban defense organization, the Ouvriers de la Commune
Clôture, used notices posted at several gates of the town to advertise their
criées de bans, official pronouncements, also published orally, mentioning
all that might be detrimental to the defense of the town and the efficacy of
the walls (Reyerson 1997b: 219). Town criers were used by the court
systems to summon wrongdoers and debtors to court to account for their
actions or failure to pay. Specific spots were sites of proclamation in
Montpellier: in the trivium of the court of the king of Majorca; in the
Canabasseria (linen quarter); in the canton of the Pelliperia (furriers’
quarter); in the old court in Montpelliéret, the former episcopal quarter of
town purchased in 1293 by the king of France; and in other places. The
pronouncements of a town crier penetrated the urban air as an important
method of communication of official information of a political or juridical
nature.
Orality was an important dimension of medieval culture in town and
country. Word of mouth and gossip were forms of transmission of news.
More formally, in towns, municipal officials regularly took oaths of office
at the annual public ceremony ushering in the new municipal administration
(Pégat et al. 1840). Rules and regulations regarding government and
business were thus recalled. There was a ritualistic, even tactile, quality to
these annual events that is echoed in the business practice of merchants.
When merchants came before the notary to draw up a contract, they often
sealed the deal with the swearing of an oath, placing their hands on copies
of the Gospels (Reyerson 2002b).
In one form or another, the town chronicle, the town criers, postings of
notices about town, and oaths, were public and official ways of
disseminating information through oral and written means (Reyerson
2000a). Noise, sight, perhaps even touch were involved. These channels of
information recalled for merchants and other urban inhabitants the details of
local business practice while letters and orders from political authorities
imparted import/export information, monetary information, and fiscal
demands that were usually the result of war planning and operations.
The merchant sought out the inns and taverns of medieval towns for
business contacts as well as leisure, entertainment, and camaraderie.
Networks of informants briefed the merchant. Many a deal was struck in an
inn, arranged by brokers (Reyerson 2002a). Alcohol facilitated exchanges.
Though a barley-based beer was periodically brewed in Paris, and beer was
drunk during the Hundred Years War, during the English occupation of
Paris from 1422 to 1436, wine was the preferred beverage, with coarse,
dark wines the drink of the lower strata of urban society and the clearer reds
the preference of the urban elite (Vincent-Cassy 2005). The self-respecting
townsperson of southern France kept vineyards to supply his/her urban
household with wine and perhaps to place some in the market. In the
fourteenth century, Avignon and Paris were both markets for those wines of
southern France that traveled tolerably well (Dion 1959). All wine was
drunk young as wines did not survive for long periods.
But there was another side to the hospitality industry in medieval towns.
Rowdiness of inns and taverns often disrupted the quiet of an urban
evening. Drunkenness was so prevalent in France that in the late Middle
Ages homicide committed under the influence of alcohol could qualify for
royal pardon. Drunkenness affected speech and movement. The gait of the
drunk was stumbling and hesitating, double vision played a part, and
stomach sickness, headache, intestinal trouble, and thirst affected the
drunken individual, as related by Chaucer, Langland, Froissart, Gerson, and
others (Vincent-Cassy 2005). Bad odors emanated from the drunk as did
noisy flatulence. The prevalence of wine, ale, and beer had a negative
impact on those who overindulged and on those who witnessed the
inebriation.
At fairs in Champagne and elsewhere, the milling around of merchants
during the days of bargaining would have created a constant murmur
punctuated by exclamations, no doubt, at a deal struck. Beyond the pealing
of bells and the hustle and bustle in the urban streets, the sounds of people
hawking items, the creaking of carts transporting goods, the braying and
whinnying of animals of transport, were a fixture in the medieval
marketplace. If Jacques de Vitry’s peasant was revived with manure, the
animals were not far away. At the central Herbaria Square in Montpellier,
day labor hiring took place during the night, and then at dawn hucksters and
resellers set up stalls and stands to sell vegetables and chickens (Reyerson
1997b). It is not for nothing that we attribute a loud and raucous voice to
the fishwife of earlier times, echoing the hucksters’ and itinerant peddlers’
voices. The noise at a city center marketplace such as this was significant.
In London, stands placed in the street had to be removed by vespers,
reducing the blockage of passage and some of the chaos by nightfall
(Kowaleski 2008: 351).
Street cries advertised the goods of taverns and peddlers. Juan Ruiz in
The Book of Good Love described the huckster, saying, “The pedlar [sic]
goes off with her basket, jingling her bells, dangling her jewelry, rings, and
pins, saying ‘Tablecloths for sale, swap for towels”’ (Frugoni 2005: 48).
Jingling of horse harnesses may have complemented the peddler’s bells as
riders darted through the crowded streets, calling out warnings to
pedestrians. Until the fashion of pedestrian quarters took over in late
twentieth-century European towns, modern automobilists were undaunted
by the narrowness, the crowds, and obstructions of urban streets. Why in
the Middle Ages would horsemen have acted otherwise? Shopkeepers also
worked at their artisanal tasks outside, singing perhaps, calling out to
acquaintances, since inhabitants knew each other. As Lauro Martines stated:
“The same people walked the same streets daily. There was mutual instant
recognition … Every neighbor had his or her particular identity associated
with a trade, a name, a reputation, a clan or family” (Martines 1979: 74).
Unfamiliar folk would have stood out. Merchants were strangers in towns
to which they traveled the first time, but inhabitants welcomed them, as
trade was the grease for the medieval urban economy.
Merchants, the urban elite, and the nobility ate well. Medieval cookbooks
reveal a sophisticated palette for some medieval inhabitants (Cosman
1976). Spices were in high demand. The stereotype that medieval
inhabitants employed spices to make tainted meat and poorly preserved
produce more edible is false. In fact, medieval elites used a large variety of
spices in each dish wherever they could. People paid merchants high prices
for pepper, cinnamon, cumin, saffron, and the like, and they appear to have
consumed or at least purchased great quantities of these (Freedman 2008).
Francesco di Balduccio Pegolotti, author of a noted merchant manual,
provided lists of spices and their prices and availability in various markets
(Balducci Pegolotti 1936). The spice sellers, pepperers, and apothecaries
present in larger towns catered to an elite and middle-class clientele, both
lay and ecclesiastical.
Cooking smells, punctuated by spices, permeated all corners of the town.
In the poorly vented medieval urban interiors, smoke from fires for food
and heat clogged the rooms. Modern human noses become acclimated to
odors rather quickly and fail to note the uniqueness after a short while.
Perhaps it was the same for medieval urban inhabitants.
Food sources varied across Europe. Because of climatic warming in the
centuries before the beginning of the Little Ice Age, vines could be grown
in England and wheat in Iceland, something that would no longer be
possible from the fourteenth century on. The rural poor subsisted on a diet
of rye bread and gruel or porridge, while the nobility and townspeople of
some fortune certainly ate white bread. With the demographic disasters of
the fourteenth-century famines and plagues, it is said that three people
remained at the end of the century where five had existed before. The
shrinkage of urban populations meant that more people ate meat in 1400,
and more wore shirts.
Towns of Mediterranean Europe were often subject to a modified regime
of urban servitudes, a legacy of Roman law that remains a part of
contemporary French law. Merchants and urban inhabitants overall were
concerned about the urban environment. Rights of way, possession of
rainwater, and the passage of light and air were vital considerations in a
town where living space was cramped, water in short supply, and the streets
extremely narrow. There were building restrictions in many statutes that
governed the extent of overhangs and the runoff of rainwater. Neighbors’
complaints abounded in such tight quarters. The light that penetrated these
closely plotted streets was dim, even at midday. People lived on top of one
another, with the sensory overload that created.
In Montpellier in 1205, statutes provided for the deputation of two men
to supervise the maintenance of the roads, walls of buildings, gutters, and
garbage (Teulet 1863). The control of latrine placement and water use may
also have devolved upon the individuals responsible for the urban walls. In
the archives are occasional permits to build gutters or drainage canals. In
several cases fines were issued for the illegal construction of latrines and
gutters, and frequently building permits included the prohibition to
construct these. Since the exterior trench (douve) was undoubtedly used for
urban waste disposal, the involvement of the municipality is
understandable, from the standpoint of defense but also of urban hygiene.
Urban statutes regulated where some artisanal activities could take place.
Tanners were in need of water for their trade and often relegated to the
outskirts of towns because of the smells associated with their activities.
Toxic chemicals were involved in tanning leather—tannic acid, dung, and
lime. Butchers in Ferrara could build their shops only along a certain stretch
of the Po River. Some towns limited the number of butcher shops to control
the amount of waste in the urban environment (Zupko and Laures 1996:
35–7).
Water was in short supply in some medieval towns (Guillerme 1988;
Squatriti 1998). Fountains and wells in the town and its suburbs supplied
water for domestic needs. In addition, there were generally public baths.
The latter, in Montpellier and in other medieval towns, would have been
sites of encounter, socialization, and sometimes prostitution (Rossiaud
1988). In Montpellier, two small tributaries of a regional river, the Lez,
crossed the town, and the guardians of the fortifications (ouvriers) rerouted
water courses occasionally.
Particular quarters of town may have been especially noisy. The stews
and bathhouses that were part of every medieval town would have been
raucous. There were complaints about the noise of prostitutes in Spanish
towns. In Barcelona in the early fourteenth century officials of a parish
church complained that prostitutes disrupted sermons with their practices.
On another occasion an upstanding wife registered a complaint that “honest
and chaste” women had trouble avoiding talk with “vile women” (Mutgé i
Vives 1994: 259–315). In Girona there were prohibitions against prostitutes
participating in dances on penalty of arrest for them and the musicians as
well, with confiscation of their musical instruments, horns, drums, and all.
Girona prohibited public women from touching foodstuffs, fruit, vegetables,
fish, and baker’s pans, much as Jews were forbidden to do so, for fear of
pollution and corruption (Clara 2008). The prostitute quarter in Girona was
close by the cathedral and the city walls, hard surfaces thus that the many
sounds of sexual favors and announcements would have bounced off. The
desire to canton off prostitutes in red-light districts may reflect more than
simply moral motives, but rather a paternal desire on the part of urban
government to shape the urban topography, protecting some quarters from
mixing of populations and the violence that sometimes ensued (Mummey
and Reyerson 2011). Student and merchant populations were among the
peripatetic of medieval society and clients for the seedier side of life. The
relationship between marginal populations and the sights, sounds, and
smells of the medieval city merits future study.
Urban statutes regularly governed the presence of pigs and other
domestic animals in the streets. Regulations in London for streets in 1297
included: “that pig-sties that are in the streets should be speedily removed,
and that no swine should be found in the streets, on pain of forfeiting them,
in aid of making the walls and gates” (Kowaleski 2008: 351). Pigs removed
refuse in Italian towns and were fattened on garbage in the streets. The
individual who won the sanitation contract for the year in Siena for 1296
had the right to collect “all the garbage and manure and spilled cereal grains
from the piazza del Campo and streets adjacent to it” (Frugoni 2005: 65).
The same individual had the right to become a town crier, and “to keep,
likewise in the piazza del Campo, for the space of a year ‘a sow and four
piglets so that they can gather and eat all the spilled cereal.”’ In Italy these
types of pigs were porchi di Sant’Antonio, fattened for free and free to roam
the streets (Frugoni 2005: 65). On the other hand, inhabitants in Montpellier
were forbidden from nourishing pigs within the town walls (Pégat et al.
1840: 131). The tendency of medieval folk to fatten their pigs on garbage
was an obvious health hazard, particularly in times of epidemic. Moreover,
pigs were omnivorous, presenting a threat to young children and to
cemetery graves. Other animals were also kept in towns: cows, horses,
goats, sheep, asses, and mules, along with chickens and other fowl, were
present at times, with the attendant waste littering the streets. Sounds and
smells of animals were present in the rural environment as well, but it must
have been possible to catch a breath of fresh air there.
Odors of all kinds, from animals, waste, and urban artisanal industry,
hung in the air of medieval towns, enveloping the merchant as he moved
through the streets. The garbage situation in England was so dire that it
necessitated a national ordinance in 1385 to have the garbage removed in
English towns. The text of the regulations reveals the problems of hygiene
and noxious odors that medieval towns confronted:

So much dung and filth of garbage, as well as entrails of slaughtered beasts, and other
corruptions are cast and put into ditches, rivers and other waters, and also in many other places
within and around cities, boroughs, and towns of the realms and their suburbs, that the air there
is greatly corrupt and infected, and many maladies and other intolerable diseases do daily
happen to the inhabitants as well as to those dwelling, visiting and traveling to the cities … to
the great annoyance, damage and peril of inhabitants, dwellers, visitors and travelers.
Kowaleski 2008: 351–2

In contrast to the ever-present detritus, the medieval sense of aesthetics

was strong. Urban populations were keen on fashion. Self-representation in
clothing was commonplace by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The
medieval merchant may have been something of a dandy, as it was men
who were the main consumers of fashion (Heller 2007). Clothing provided
social markers for status (Mathews 2012). Worldly goods became more
available as the European economy matured, and conspicuous consumption
abounded (Jardine 1996). Display of wares and retails sales increased,
raising the awareness of luxury goods at all levels of urban society, even if
they could be purchased by only a fortunate few. Merchants and their
clients were keen on texture, touch, color, the sheen of fabrics. Satins, silk
brocades, cloth of gold were highly prized. One gets a sense of the tastes of
the nobility and mercantile elite from the opulent inventory of the
Argenterie, a kind of French royal commissary or department store, under
Jacques Coeur, the French royal financier of the mid-fifteenth century.
Jewelry and gems, luxury cloths of gold and silver, wool and silk fabrics of
red, blue, green, and sometimes yellow, furs of squirrel, fox, ermine,
marten, and sable were present in abundance. Coeur, the son of a furrier of
Bourges, undoubtedly had a sharp eye and practiced touch for high quality
merchandise (Reyerson 2005: 58–9). Belts in particular permitted the
display of wealth. Zonas belts from Ragusa were made of silver squares,
latched together (Stuard 2006: 50). A long strap hung down from the waist
and must have created its own whoosh as the wearer walked. In London the
barons frequented the houses of royal officials, milling about in their finery
with their attendant animals, hawks, parrots, falcons, an occasional pet
monkey, and always dogs (Holmes 1952: 41).
The craft processes used in the gold and silk industries, such as
production by silk reelers and gold beaters, involved handwork without
mechanization. The precious metal-workers hammering thin sheets of gold
rang out in the urban streets such as the Street of the Silversmiths or the
Street of the Goldsmiths. In those towns where the mints were centrally
located, the mintmasters striking coins would have had the same effect.
Merchants typically bit coins to determine their authenticity; they were a
keen judge of fineness and precious metal content because their business
depended on it. Touch, as well as sight, was key to merchants’ ability to
judge quality merchandise and authenticate precious metals and gems in
such items as coins, jewelry, monstrances, and reliquaries.
Quality control was a major feature of the medieval artisanal industry and
the marketing of products. Merchants needed to cultivate a whole range of
subtle responses via the senses to determine quality. The ability to evaluate
via taste, touch, smell, and sight was essential. Merchant manuals were
explicit regarding what counted as high-quality merchandise. The merchant
had a highly developed sensory vocabulary that made use of sight, smell,
touch, and taste in product assessment (Manke 2012). Guardians of the
pepperers’ trade in Montpellier, inspecting products for quality and fraud,
discovered what they viewed as impure saffron at a pepperer’s shop. In a
lawsuit of 1355–8 regarding the adulteration of this saffron, the expert
witnesses called to testify spoke of varying degrees of impurity according to
the sack. The addition of foreign elements caused the merchandise to weigh
heavier. Expert witness testimony was sought from pepperers, apothecaries,
weighers, and merchants from Montpellier and foreigners from Spanish
lands. Witnesses could not pinpoint the corrupting element, but a few
indicated that a sweet or honey-based additive was possible, whereas
saffron itself tasted bitter. Still other witnesses suggested “a sweet liquor, a
powder, and a heavy and sharp matter such as oats” (Reyerson 1982).
Medieval urban spectacles featured processions of trades clad in their
finest attire. Furriers in Venice in the 1268 procession honoring Doge
Lorenzo Tiepolo paraded with “outfits trimmed with ermine and fox and the
skins of wild animals” (Mackenney 1987: 141–2). Such ceremonies were
accompanied by drums and trumpets; by the sixteenth century, Venice
witnessed artillery salutes and images designed in sugar (Mackenney 1987:
145). Religious festivals on major saints’ days and urban celebrations such
as the entry of royalty or nobility would have created a special kind of
noise. Church ceremonies themselves involved the sound of chants and the
scent of incense.
The capital cities of London and Paris offered up to inhabitants and
visitors alike a panoply of sensations in the humdrum of everyday life and a
bonanza in special moments. Merchants and students sometimes
participated. One such occasion greeted the much-awaited birth of Philip
Augustus in 1165. Gerald of Wales, in an autobiographical work, De
Principum Instructione, recounted his experiences as a student in Paris at
that time. He was wrenched from sleep by the clanging of bells and the
blaze of candles. From his student digs he looked down on a square:

Two old hags who, in spite of their poverty were carrying candles, and showing great joy in
their faces, voices and gestures, were running precipitately to meet each other, as if they were
charging. And when [Gerald] asked them the cause of such commotion and exultation, one of
them looked up at him and said: “We have a king given us now by God, an heir to the kingdom,
who by God’s grace shall be a man of great might. Through him your king shall suffer
dishonour and defeat, punishment and shame, confusion and misery” … For the women knew
that he [Gerald] and his companions were from the realm of England.
Davis 2006: 334

The density of housing and the abandon of inhabitants in celebrating such

events colored the experience of anyone living in a large inner city.
The English student Alexander Neckam has left his observations of the
journey he undertook from London to Paris to study in that intellectual
capital of Europe. The account is full of sensory descriptions of both cities
(Holmes 1952). Wace and William Fitz Stephen both mentioned the docks
area of London, which was a great port, with ships coming in for repair,
with the pounding of pegs and nails, and the odors of the tidal basin
(Holmes 1952: 33). Merchants would have frequented the cookshop on the
quays, praised by Fitz Stephen; it emitted wonderful odors that mingled
with the fish in ships putting in. The London jetty was also the site of
laundresses at work—called La Lavenderebregge. People washing clothes
was a common sight along many a town stream, such as the Eure at
Chartres.
Another type of occurrence became more frequent in medieval towns
from the early fourteenth century on: social unrest. Most medieval revolts
have been studied for their political, economic, and social elements and not
for their sensory dimensions (Cohn 2006). The exception might be the
phenomenon of rumor, often associated with medieval revolts, instigating
turbulence that clearly spread by hearing and overhearing and was a key
factor in many medieval upheavals (Gauvard 1994). An early German
revolt of 1074 in the archiepiscopal city of Cologne offers some sensory
dimensions as it was described by chroniclers Sigebert of Gembloux and
Lambert of Hersfeld (Toye 2010).2 The revolt involved an uprising of the
population of Cologne against the archbishop, one of a number of such
upheavals at the time—Worms, Le Mans, a little later Laon. The Cologne
revolt was sparked by the commandeering of a boat by the archbishop’s
men from a merchant whose goods were thrown out of the vessel. The
merchant’s son went about town giving speeches about the archbishop’s
unjust and tyrannical acts. Lambert likened the participants to leaves caught
up by the wind. Sigebert told a similar tale of a rampage in which the laity
baptized babies, anointing them with ear wax (“the foul humor of the ears”)
in place of holy oil. They burnt tithes, trampled hosts, and poured out the
wine of the mass. Lambert described the mob forcing its way into the
archbishop’s quarters; in his chapel they “handled the sacred vessels with
polluted hands,” upending objects associated with the mass (Toye 2010).
The senses of touch and hearing were deeply implicated in the chroniclers’
descriptions of the Cologne revolt.
In addition to social unrest in the later Middle Ages, famine, plague, and
war affected medieval populations. The Great Famine of 1315–17 (and
beyond) caused massive devastation for cities such as Ypres and Bruges
(Jordan 1996). Ypres, the inland town with fewer food sources, was the
harder hit. The phrase “gathering up the dead in the streets” punctuates the
accounts of Ypres for 1316 (Kowaleski 2008: 318). Ten percent of the
population of Ypres succumbed to famine in this year. The stench of dead
bodies must have been overwhelming. Famine in Siena in 1329 saw the
poor discriminated against, leading to their uprising over the denial of
charity; armed guards drove people out of the city through the gates
(Kowaleski 2008: 323). When the impoverished were denied charity, a
Florentine merchant described their reaction in his private diary: “At this
cruel, arrogant reply, there arose infinite cries and sounds of hands striking,
shouts, and crying, and people clawing their faces so deeply that they
seemed to bear the marks of nails. Throughout the entire city, countryside,
castles, and fortresses could be heard the voices of people crying for
someone in their family who had died” (Kowaleski 2008: 320–2).
The early Italian Renaissance writer, Giovanni Boccaccio, described the
experience of the Black Death of 1348 in Florence in his introduction to the
Decameron (Boccaccio 1972). The smell of death was everywhere, and
there were bodies in the streets. Neighbors smelled rotting corpses in
houses, and the dead were piled up in front of buildings. People reacted
differently. Some locked themselves in their houses; others indulged in
excessive drinking and merriment. Some, as Boccaccio noted, “did not go
into seclusion but went about carrying flowers, fragrant herbs, and various
spices which they often held to their noses, believing it good to comfort the
brain with such odors since the air was heavy with the stench of dead
bodies, illness, and pungent medicines” (Kowaleski 2008: 325). Still others,
such as the audience for Boccaccio’s tales, chose to leave the city and take
refuge in the country.
War throughout the Middle Ages was often conducted through sieges of
cities. During the First Crusade the crusaders, holed up in a town in the
Near East, had to drink the contents of the sewer since they had neglected to
observe, when installing themselves inside the fortifications, that the well
was outside the city walls. In 1347 at the siege of Caffa on the Black Sea by
the Turks, the latter catapulted plague victims into the city, infecting the
population, among them Genoese who escaped to the West in galleys,
bringing the plague with them (Ziegler 1969). Plague followed the trade
routes, and the urban merchant population was hit hard. Plague also
devastated the poor and the undernourished, and sometimes the young.
Crowded conditions in towns and monasteries increased the death tolls.
The merchant’s journey across urban Europe would have taken him to a
wide variety of towns, but his sensory experience may have remained
relatively constant: strong smells of foods, smoke, and refuse; sounds of
animals, carts, people in the streets, bells of all kinds piercing the urban air
space. When night fell, darkness covered all. War, unrest, and disease
brought new sensations to the fore in the later Middle Ages. As cities
became larger and more crowded, the impact on all the senses was
accentuated. Conspicuous consumption and a retail market reconfigured
sensory aspects of the urban economy. Demographic and economic crisis
transformed the urban landscape. With a consideration of the multitude of
sensations that expressed and shaped the urban experience, the medieval
city returns to life in our imaginations.
 CHAPTER THREE
_____________________________________

The Senses in the

Marketplace: Markets,
Shops, and Shopping
in Medieval Towns
MARTHA CARLIN

For medieval people, the marketplace represented a varied and vigorous

sensory experience. Markets and shops rang with sounds of every kind:
street-cries and public announcements, clanging bells and splashing water,
squawks and squeals, pounding, grinding and swearing, the rumble and
crunch of heavy cartwheels, unfamiliar accents and languages, snatches of
whistling and song (see Figure 3.1). In the marketplace, the ordinary smells
of urban life—smoke and sewage, old clothes and boiled greens, baking
bread and incense from churches—were overlain by the scents of blood and
fish, hot snacks and ripe cheese, fresh straw and new leather. Sight, taste,
and touch were stimulated by the bright colors of fresh produce and new
textiles, the glitter of gaudy trinkets and polished metalware, the mouth-
watering arrays of food and drink, the softness of luxury furs, the rough
staves of a wooden barrel, the stickiness of a drip of honey. But the
medieval marketplace could deceive as well as delight the senses. Vendors
used temptations, wiles, and outright frauds to lure and cheat customers,
crowds could turn ugly, and thieves and cutpurses lurked. The medieval
marketplace thus represented a dense sensory experience, but also a
potentially dangerous one.
 Cooper and wheelwright (Chartres Cathedral, St.
FIGURE 3.1:
Julien the Hospitaller window, c. 1215–25). Copyright
Stuart Whatling. Used by permission. Source:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/21_pages/Chartres_
Bay21_Panel02.htm.

THE MARKETPLACE IN THE EARLY

MEDIEVAL PERIOD, 500–1000
In the Latin West, barbarian invasions, the collapse of imperial government,
and the contraction in long-distance trade led to a shift in the center of
gravity from towns to the great rural estates and monasteries. In northern
Europe, many towns withered in the fifth and sixth centuries and fell into
ruin. When new settlements and markets arose in the seventh and eighth
centuries, they often were established in new locations outside former
Roman towns, on beaches or rivers, near rural monasteries or villas, at cult
centers and other gathering-points. In the ninth and tenth centuries, many of
these extramural settlements and non-urban marketplaces fell victim to the
Vikings (Pestell and Ulmschneider 2003; Ottaway 1992: 125, 144).
In southern Europe, urban life survived more strongly than in the north.
Two letters by the Gallo-Roman aristocrat Sidonius Apollinaris (b. c. 430;
d. 480–90) present glimpses of the marketplaces of Rome and Clermont.
Sidonius wrote the first letter in 467 upon arriving in Rome. He tells his
friend Herenius that:

my arrival coincided with the wedding of the patrician Ricimer, who was being married to the
emperor’s daughter in the hopes of securer times for the state. Not individuals alone, but whole
classes and parties are given up to rejoicing … scarce a theater, provision-market, praetorium,
forum, temple, or gymnasium but echoed to the Fescennine cry of Thalassio!
Murray 2000: 199, 202–4

Evidently many of Rome’s public institutions, including the markets, were

still in existence. Closed for business to celebrate the imperial nuptials, they
rang with the ancient wedding cry of pagan days instead of commercial
clamor.
Sidonius’s second letter (c. early 470s?), written to Graecus, bishop of
Marseille, after Sidonius had become bishop of Clermont (c. 470), makes it
clear that wealthy Gallo-Romans, perhaps living on their country estates,
paid professional agents to buy imported goods in the urban markets on
their behalf:

The bearer of this letter earns a poor living solely as a trader … Because he is known to hire
himself out as a purchasing agent, his reputation has grown, but so too has the wealth of others.
People put a lot of faith in him even though his means are small; when a ship’s cargo is landed
and goes on the market, he attends the sale with other people’s money, but he deposits with his
creditors, who do well to credit him, no collateral but his own reputation for honesty.
Murray 2000: 193, 226–7

A glimpse of the Roman marketplace a century or so later occurs in a

celebrated anecdote recounted by Bede (731) concerning Pope Gregory the
Great before his pontificate (590–604):

We are told that one day some merchants who had recently arrived in Rome displayed their
many wares in the market-place. Among the crowd who thronged to buy was Gregory, who saw
among the merchandise some boys exposed for sale. They had fair complexions, fine-cut
features, and beautiful hair. Looking at them with interest, he inquired from what country, and
what part of the world they came. “They come from the island of Britain,” he was told, “where
the people all have this appearance.”

When Gregory asked their race and province, he was told that they were
Angles from Deira (roughly the East Riding of Yorkshire) (Bede 1955, 2.1:
99–100; Cramp 2004). According to Bede’s account, barely a generation
after the Gothic wars had left Rome shattered and depopulated, the Roman
marketplace was once again attracting overseas merchants and crowds of
shoppers, including the aristocratic Gregory himself. The sale of slaves in
the public marketplace, a common sight in the classical world, clearly was
still routine in post-imperial Christian Rome. It was the attractiveness of the
Anglian boys, not the fact that they were for sale, which caught Gregory’s
eye.
In the eighth and ninth centuries, many Carolingian towns held a weekly
market where local goods were sold. Essential supplies, including wheat,
wine, salt, and iron, came by ship to seaports and river ports such as
Dorestad, Quentovic, Rouen, and Mainz (Riché 1988: 112–13). The greater
towns attracted merchants who dealt in luxury imports, and customers who
could afford them. Cambrai and Mainz, for example, offered delectable
Eastern spices such as pepper, cinnamon, galanga, and cloves (Riché 1988:
174; Reuter 1991: 235), while south of the Alps, the royal capital of Pavia
attracted merchants from Venice and southern Italy with luxury goods to
tempt local and regional buyers, and wealthy pilgrims on the transalpine
route to Rome. The bishop of Piacenza and the abbots of Nonantola and
Brescia established warehouses there for buying in bulk, and when
Charlemagne (768–814) was in northern Italy, his courtiers bought
expensive garments of imported silk at Pavia. Successful markets were
centers of news and gossip as well as commerce, and when word spread at
Pavia that a wealthy aristocrat, Gerald of Aurillac (c. 855–909), had arrived
with an entourage on his way home from Rome, the Venetian merchants
came with clothing and perfumes to tempt his men (Riché 1988: 29, 116–
17, 164).
Archaeological excavations have revealed a much grubbier picture at
other market centers, including York in northern England. Founded by the
Romans as a legionary fortress called Eboracum, York was largely
abandoned in the post-Roman period. In the Anglian period a new
settlement, known as Eoforwic, grew up about one kilometer (half a mile)
away, along the River Foss. An eighth-century life of St. Luidgar mentions
Frisian merchants at York, and the celebrated scholar Alcuin of York (c.
732–804) hailed York as “a merchant-town of land and sea.” Remains of
pottery from northern France and the Rhineland suggest that Anglian York
was indeed an international emporium supplying the Northumbrian royal
house (Ottaway 1992: 120–32).
Attacked by the Vikings in 867, York came under Scandinavian control.
Viking York, known as Jorvik, revived as an urban center with an influx of
Scandinavian immigrants. They settled along the River Ouse, just outside
the Roman walls. According to Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Life of St. Oswald
(997–1002), York was “inexpressibly filled and enriched by the treasures of
merchants, who come there from everywhere, and most of all from the
people of Denmark” (Ottaway 1992: 146–8; Byrhtferth of Ramsey 2008:
xxix, 150–1). Archaeological evidence, especially from the extramural site
of 16–22 Coppergate, tells a similar story, but also reveals that tenth-
century Jorvik was squalid in the extreme. At Coppergate the earliest
buildings were flimsy, with wattle walls and central hearths, and were
occupied by metalworkers who left abundant debris. They used bar-iron and
iron scrap to make a variety of tools, weapons, structural fittings, and small,
tin-plated dress fittings. Around 975 the metalworkers disappeared, perhaps
evicted to another location where their fires, noise, and smoke would be
less troublesome. They were succeeded by wood-turners and workers in
bone and antler who occupied more substantial buildings with semi-
basements, which also contained extensive evidence of textile-working—
typically women’s work—in the form of wool combs, spindles, loom
weights, and iron and bronze needles. Fragments of clothing recovered
included a crocheted woolen sock and a woman’s cap made locally of Near
Eastern silk. Traces of vegetable dyes showed that clothing was brightly
colored, in hues that included red, blue, and purple.
 Vast amounts of fish remains and animal bone were found, the latter
dominated by beef, followed by mutton and pork, all probably butchered
on-site. The large number of pig-lice recovered suggests that the pigs were
raised in the back yards. Quantities of human fecal remains were scattered
throughout the site, not only in cesspits, but also on yard surfaces and
building floors, while the wells for drinking water were dug next to
cesspits. The excavators also recovered millions of eggs from human
intestinal parasites. The occupants of these buildings must have lived and
worked and traded their goods in an environment that reeked of human and
animal waste, amidst piles of rotting garbage, teeming populations of lice,
flies, and other insects, and colonies of mice and rats (Ottaway 1992: 149–
55). The filthy conditions at Coppergate recall the revulsion of the Abbasid
diplomat Ahmad ibn Fadlan at the hygiene of a group of Rus Viking
merchants (“the dirtiest creatures of God”) whom he encountered on the
Volga in 922 (Ibn Fadlan 2005: 64–5).

MARKETS, 1000–1350
In the Latin West, the new millennium brought a decline in warfare, a boom
in population, and a revival of trade, all of which led to three centuries of
dramatic urban growth. Old towns were re-populated, and new towns were
founded in large numbers. Around the 1180s Chrétien de Troyes included
two striking depictions of urban marketplaces in The Story of the Grail (Le
Conte du Graal). In the first, he described a town so barren and wretched
that “there was no mill grinding or oven baking, and … no bread, cake or
anything for sale, not even a penny’s worth” (Chrétien de Troyes 1990,
lines 1748–72: xi, 361–2). Here Chrétien portrayed urban desolation
through its impact on the senses in the marketplace: the silence, the lack of
the odor of baking bread, and the absence of goods displayed for sale. By
contrast, when Sir Gawain looked out over the second town, he beheld a
magnificent display of commerce and prosperity (see Figure 3.2). He saw
streets thronged
 with beautiful men and women, and the tables of the moneychangers all covered with gold and
silver and other coins. He saw the squares and the streets all filled with every type of workman
engaged in every possible activity: one fashioning helmets and another hauberks, one lances and
another blazons, one bridles and another spurs. Some furbished swords, while some fulled cloth
and others wove it; still others combed it, and others sheared it. Some melted down gold and
silver; others fashioned them into fine and beautiful works: cups and bowls, enameled jewelry,
and rings, belts, and buckles. One might well believe and declare that the town held a fair every
day, filled as it was with so much wealth: wax, pepper, grain, spotted and grey furs, and all kinds
of merchandise.
Chrétien de Troyes 1990, lines 5693–717: 409

Chrétien’s description presumably reflected his own wealthy city of Troyes,

seat of the powerful counts of Champagne and home to two celebrated
annual trade fairs. But Troyes was modest compared with the royal capital
of Paris, the largest city north of the Alps. During the reign of Philip
Augustus (1180–1223), the city expanded on both banks of the River Seine.
Philip transformed his capital, enclosing the enlarged city with massive
walls, ordering the paving of principal streets and squares, and building an
imposing new fortress, the Louvre (Baldwin 2010: 19–20, 25–31). Philip
also set about regulating the capital’s trade in essential supplies, including
meat, wine, bread, and salt (Baldwin 1986: 346–7). In 1183 the king built a
covered market called the Halles in the marketplace of the Champeaux on
the Right Bank, beside the cemetery of the Holy Innocents. According to
Philip’s biographer Rigord, a monk of St. Denis (c. 1145–c. 1210), the
king’s motive was to provide a marketplace that would protect goods and
traders from wet weather and enable merchandise to be locked up securely
at night. Philip’s new market was polygonal: its southern half was
rectangular, while the northern half formed a rough triangle. He surrounded
it with a wall of limestone blocks that enclosed an area of around two
hectares (five acres) (see plans in Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 178–80). At the
southern end of the site he built two huge, two-storied, stone market halls
that stretched almost the full width of the marketplace. The northern hall,
the Halle aux Draps, measured about 128.63 × 15.59 meters (422 × 51
feet).1 It was lighted by seventy windows and had thirty-two bays, each
containing two stalls (i.e., sixty-four stalls along each long wall). Each story
thus contained 128 stalls, which could be subdivided into smaller units. To
the south lay the similar Halle aux Tisserands. Between the enclosure wall
and the buildings the king built covered stalls (Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 16–
17, 21–2, 26–7, 31, n. 60, 53, 178–81). The result was a vast shopping
bazaar, the first of its kind in the Latin West on such a grand scale. It was
intended by the king to house all sellers of manufactured goods, thus
enabling shoppers to compare the goods of rival vendors, and facilitating
the enforcement of regulations and the collection of taxes. To achieve this,
all the artisans of Paris were ordered to close their shops on three days each
week (Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays) and bring their merchandise to
the Halles to sell (Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 24–5, 83). The Halles initially
specialized in the sale of woolen cloth (see Figure 3.3), but also became an
important market for other manufactured goods, and for grain and other
foodstuffs (Baldwin 1986: 345; Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 83–4).
 FIGURE 3.2:Making stirrups (Chartres Cathedral, St. John the
Evangelist window, c. 1205–15). Copyright Stuart Whatling.
Used by permission. Source:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/48_pages/Chartres_
Bay48_Panel03.htm.

By the end of Philip’s reign, a wholesale market for grain and dried
legumes had been established in the northern (triangular) part of the walled
precinct, and there was an open-air market for fresh and salt fish (see Figure
3.4) in the large extramural triangle of land to the east of the grain market
(Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 69–70, 179). By the 1290s, when the population
of Paris was reaching its medieval peak of perhaps 200,000 (Baldwin 2010:
30), the entire site, including the extramural fish market, was packed with
some nineteen long halls and numerous shops and stalls (Lombard-Jourdan
2009: 35, 51, 72–3, 151–2, 180–1).
The early market halls were constructed of ashlar masonry and had tiled
roofs. Most had an upper story, reached by a large external stairway, and
these massive two-storied buildings loomed about 12 meters (c. 39 feet) in
height. The later halls were similar, but in some the upper part was half-
timbered, and some had slate roofs instead of tiles (Lombard-Jourdan 2009:
31). Inside, the halls were divided into three aisles by two rows of stone
pillars or wooden posts. The side aisles contained two stalls per bay,
forming a long “street” of stalls facing each other across the broad central
aisle. Windows provided lighting, and large doors at each end of the ground
floor allowed access to pack animals and carts bringing goods to the stalls.
The stalls were furnished as needed with tables, sideboards, cupboards,
shelves, display cabinets, or poles on which to hang clothing or footwear
(Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 31, 33–4).
 FIGURE 3.3: A draper’s
assistant measures out striped cloth for
a customer (Chartres Cathedral, St. James the Greater
window, c. 1220–5). Copyright Stuart Whatling. Used by
permission. Source:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Charters/05_pages/Chartres_
Bay05_Panel02.htm.

Three sources that provide especially rich glimpses of the sensory

experience in the marketplaces of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century
Paris are John of Garland’s Dictionarius (c. 1218; revised c. 1230);
Guillaume de la Villeneuve’s Crieries de Paris (c. 1265); and Jean de
Jandun’s Tractatus de laudibus Parisius (1323). John of Garland was an
English scholar who taught Latin grammar in Paris in the new university
district on the Left Bank. He wrote the Dictionarius mainly in the form of a
shopping tour of Paris, as a means of teaching Latin commercial vocabulary
to his students. Garland described the wares and working environments of
some fifty artisanal groups. Those who sold small goods, for example, often
did so from portable trestle tables in the street or marketplace. Such vendors
ranged from the elite money-changers and goldsmiths on the Grand-Pont,
which connected the city’s heart on the Ile de la Cité with the commercial
quarter on the Right Bank (see Figure 3.5), to John’s neighbor William, who
sold small domestic wares such as soap, mirrors, razors, needles, fire-irons,
and whetstones in the market. Other sellers maintained a workshop or retail
shop, often within their own dwellings. They included the bowyers at the
Porte St.-Lazare, and the sellers of small leather goods on the Grand-Pont.
The humblest vendors had no fixed place of sale, but peddled goods or
cried their services around the streets.

FIGURE 3.4: Fishmongers selling from a table (Chartres

Cathedral, St. Anthony window, c. 1215–20). Copyright
Stuart Whatling. Used by permission. Source:
 http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/030b_pages/Chartre
s_Bay030b_Panel02.htm.

FIGURE 3.5:Moneychangers at their tables (Chartres

Cathedral, St. Peter clerestory window, c. 1210–25).
Copyright Stuart Whatling. Used by permission. Source:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/105_pages/Chartres
_Bay105_Panel01.htm

John’s text reflects his own sensory experiences in the streets and
markets. He writes of the “raw stench” of the tanneries; the black, blue, and
red fingernails of the dyers; the gleam of the furbishers’ polished swords;
the puffing of bellows in the smithies; the panting of naked fullers treading
shaggy woolen cloths in deep troughs filled with white clay and hot water;
the tinkling of the bells sold by the brooch-makers; and the cries of the
menders of cups or fur linings, and of the wine-criers, who announced the
broaching of new casks at the taverns, and carried a jug from which they
offered potential customers a taste (see Figure 3.6) (Carlin 2007: 494–8,
508–17)

FIGURE 3.6: Wine criers and customer before a tavern

(Chartres Cathedral, St. Lubin window, c. 1205–15).
Copyright Stuart Whatling. Used by permission. Source:
http://www.medievalart.org.uk/Chartres/045_pages/Chartres
_Bay045_Panel01.htm

Similar cries fill Guillaume de la Villeneuve’s Crieries de Paris,

reflecting the din of the markets and streets: “Fresh herring!” “Salt
herring!” “Meat in garlic- or honey-sauce!” “Hot mashed peas!” “Hot
beans!” “Watercress!” “Fresh lettuce!” “Eels!” “Leaven for bread!” “Good
cheese of Champagne!” “I have cheese of Brie!” “Don’t forget my fresh
butter!” “Peaches!” “Pears of Caillaux and fresh nuts!” “Vinegar, which is
good and tasty! I have mustard vinegar!” “Hot pasties!” “Hot pancakes!”
“Bread for the Dominicans! Bread for the Franciscans! Bread for the Friars
of the Sack! Bread for the Carmelites! For the poor prisoners!” “Cotton
candlewicks!” “Good wine!” “Hot wafers!” “Hot flans!” “Hot chestnuts of
Lombardy!” “Figs of Malta!” “Anise!” “Straw!” “Good shallots of
Étampes!” “Soap from overseas, soap!” “Combs!” “Hot tarts and simnels!”
“Hats, hats!” (Guillaume de la Villeneuve [1906] 1968; cf. Dillon 2012: 78–
81). The hot foods were designed to appeal to the urban poor, many of
whom would have been unable to cook a hot meal at home (Carlin 1998:
27–9, 32, 51).
In 1323, Jean de Jandun (c. 1285–1328), a philosopher at the College of
Navarre in Paris, wrote an encomium of the capital (Tractatus de laudibus
Parisius) as part of a light-hearted exchange with two other scholars
comparing Paris and Senlis (Inglis 2003: 63–5). His account of the Halles
describes the merchandise for sale in the two-storied Mercerie des
Champeaux (Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 153 n. 588; plan on 180–1), and the
pleasure that shoppers took in exploring its aisles of luxury adornments:

[I]n some places amid the lower parts of this market, and as it were beneath some heaps, some
piles of other merchandise, are found draperies, one more beautiful than the other; in others,
some superb pelisses, some made of animal skins, others of silk materials, others, finally,
composed of delicate and foreign materials, whose Latin names I confess not to know. In the
upper part of the building, which is formed like a street of an astonishing length, are displayed
all the objects that serve to adorn the different parts of the human body: for the head, crowns,
braids, caps; ivory combs for the hair; mirrors for looking at oneself; belts for the loins; purses
to hang at the side; gloves for the hands; necklaces for the breast; and other things of this sort …
[I]n these places of display, the strollers’ gazes see smiling in their eyes so many decorations for
wedding and great festival entertainments, that, after having half-scoured one range, an
impetuous desire carries them to the other, and after having traversed the entire length, an
insatiable fervor to renew this pleasure—not once nor twice, but almost indefinitely, in returning
to the beginning—makes them recommence the excursion, if they wished to follow their desire.
Jean de Jandun 2002, Ch. 3: 11–12, English translation; Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 152–3,
Latin text

Civic encomia from Italy similarly describe the hubbub of the markets and
the well-organized arrays of merchandise. In Milan in 1288, according to
Bonvesin de la Riva, markets were held each Friday and Saturday, “and,
what is more, every day, almost all things necessary to man are brought in
great abundance to the piazzas and put on sale with shouting” (Bonvesin de
la Riva 2000: 16). Early fourteenth-century Padua boasted public market
halls where haberdashery, footwear, salt meat, edible oils, cheeses, and
grain were sold, and the main square was divided into sections for the sale
of other wares: poultry, fruit, second-hand clothing, and weapons on the
north side, and wine, tools, and vegetables on the south (Giovanni da Nono
2000: 19–21; Hyde 1966: 42–3).
The splendors of London were celebrated in the early 1170s by William
Fitz Stephen. He noted the occupational clustering of the city’s artisans and
retailers, and the array of luxury imports to be found, including spices and
incense, gold and gemstones, fine steel weapons, Chinese silks, French
wines, and Russian furs. Outside the city wall, the large open space called
Smithfield served as a marketplace for livestock and farming tools; its
Saturday horse-market was attended by “all the Earls, Barons, and Knights
who are in the city, and with them many of the citizens, whether to look or
to buy” (Fitz Stephen 1990: 52–4; cf. Carlin 1998: 29–30).
Within the walls, London had no great public market squares. Instead,
perishable foodstuffs such as meat, fish, and fruit were sold from stalls and
standing-places in the main trading streets, including Westcheap (also called
Cheap; later Cheapside), Eastcheap, Old and New Fish Street, and Newgate
Street (Carlin 2008: 63–4). Established marketplaces for these had emerged
by the mid-thirteenth century and were partly reorganized in the decade c.
1273–83 (Harding 1988: 1–15). Second-hand clothing and household goods
were also sold in the streets (Liber Cust 1860, 1: 426–7; Cal Letter-Book C,
163; Cal Letter-Book D, 244). As in other medieval towns, London’s
markets were open during daylight hours only, with the earliest hours
reserved for those shopping for household use rather than for re-sale (Liber
Cust 1860, 2: 568). In 1274, as part of the reorganization of the city and its
markets, Cheapside was cleared of obstructions to enhance it as a
processional way for the reception of the new king, Edward I. The traders
were moved to stalls and to a new wooden market hall, built by the city
government and known, in imitation of Paris, as the “halles” (later the
Stocks Market) (Keene 2006: 128–9), but, as in other towns, London’s
marketplace remained loud, crowded, and full of sensory distractions.

MARKETS, 1350–1450
In Paris, the splendors of the Halles dimmed dramatically after the onset of
the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death. Trade in textiles and other
manufactured goods there contracted sharply, routine maintenance lapsed,
and by 1368 the market halls were ruinous. Charles V, recalling a time
when the Halles had been “one of the most beautiful things to see in Paris,”
lamented that they had now become deserted, and ordered the prévot to
restore them to proper order, but to no avail. Even the dealers in second-
hand clothing (fripiers), ordered to bring their wares to the Halles to sell
every Friday and Saturday, protested that the Halles drew fewer customers
than their street market in the Place des Innocents (Lombard-Jourdan 2009:
64–5, 85; cf. 25, n. 45, and 83).
However, the Halles still boasted one of the major food markets of Paris.
This was described with a shopper’s eye around 1393 in the Ménagier de
Paris, an encyclopedic manual of household management and cookery,
compiled by an anonymous wealthy bourgeois for the instruction of his
young wife. The Ménagier recommended the Halles for fresh produce of all
kinds, and also for cheese, salt, trencher bread, brooms, and pails. For other
supplies, the Ménagier recommended different markets, such as Pierre-au-
Lait for milk; the Porte-de-Paris for fish, salt, flowers, and greenery; the
Place de Grève for firewood; and the six city butcheries for fresh meat
(Ménagier 2009, 2.4.2 [p. 253]; 2.4.55 [pp. 266–7]; 2.5.18 [p. 274]; cf.
Favier 1974: 34–8).
The Ménagier gave detailed instructions for the proper scrutiny and
sensory evaluation of market wares. When shopping for a rabbit, for
example, “You can tell if it is tender by breaking one of its hind legs”
(Ménagier 2009, 2.4.11: 255). The age of a hare could be determined by
counting the holes under its tail: “There are as many holes as its age in
years” (Ménagier 2009, 2.4.22: 256; 2.5.116 [p. 293]). Mecca ginger could
be distinguished from the inferior Columbine ginger by its darker skin, its
tenderness, and its whiter flesh (Ménagier 2009, 2.5.272 [p. 321]). The six
visual and tactile qualities by which to judge a good cheese (color,
eyelessness, dryness, weight, firmness, and rind) could be recalled by a
mnemonic in verse (Ménagier 2009, 2.5.58 [pp. 281–2]).
Public marketplaces in medieval towns were often raucous, smelly, and
crowded. They could also be hazardous: customers and passers-by had to
pick their way among shards of broken pottery, slippery piles of crushed
produce or wet straw, puddles of water or blood, bundles and baskets and
other obstacles; and they had to keep a wary eye out for cutpurses, and for
stallholders sluicing down their tables with an ill-cast bucket of water. The
satirical poem London Lickpenny presents a graphic picture of the sensory
overload suffered by a poor countryman from Kent who visits the capital on
legal business. As he thrusts his way through the crowds to reach the law
courts in Westminster Hall, someone steals his hood. When he leaves, he
finds himself surrounded at the door by a crowd of Flemings crying,
“Mastar, what will ye copen or by—fine felt hatts, spectacles for to rede?”
(Sir, what do you want to buy—fine felt hats, spectacles for reading?) He
then trudges to London, where he is buffeted and bewildered by the noise
and the kaleidoscopic distractions of the marketplace. Street-sellers cry
their hot peascods, ripe strawberries, and cherries. A grocer bids him buy
pepper, saffron, cloves, grains of paradise, or rice flour; in Cheap, a mercer
offers fine lawn, Paris thread, cotton, and gauze; another trader, seeing him
without a hood, bids him buy a cap. In Candlewick Street, drapers call out
“Grete chepe of clothe” (good bargains on cloth), and street-sellers cry “Hot
shepes fete!” Fishmongers offer cod and mackerel; in Eastcheap, a fast-food
cook cries of his beef ribs and meat pies. At a tavern, pewter mugs clatter
on a heap, musicians play harp, pipe, and psaltery, and customers swear,
while street-singers sing of “Jenken and Julian” to earn tips. In Cornhill the
dazed visitor spies his own hood set out for sale among other stolen goods
in the second-hand clothing market (Dean 1996: 222–5).
In times of dearth or market disruption, the normal hurly-burly of the
marketplace could grow tense, as shoppers competed to obtain scarce
supplies. An anonymous Parisian recorded in his journal or memoir that in
December 1420, following the grand entry of Charles VI and Henry V and
their queens, the price of bread doubled, “and even then no one could buy
any without going to the baker’s before daybreak and standing pints and
quarts to the bakers and their assistants … by eight o’clock there was such a
crowd at the bakers’ doors as one could never have believed without seeing
it” (Parisian Journal 1968: 155).
Marketplaces could be especially hostile to women. In fourteenth-century
Ghent, any woman who entered the Corn Market on a market day was
likely to be “jostled, pushed, ogled, insulted, and propositioned” by the
male traders, carters, porters, dockworkers, and shoppers, and risked her
reputation and her social standing by her mere presence there (Hutton 2009:
411, 416, 421–7). A mid-fourteenth-century Flemish illustrator depicted the
biblical rape of Dinah (Genesis 34) as taking place near a stall where other
women, oblivious, chat and shop (BL, Egerton MS 1894, f. 17; Keene
2006: 138–9 and Figure 7.5).
It is not surprising that well-to-do householders largely avoided the
public markets, and sent servants to do the shopping and haggling instead
(Ménagier 2009, 2.4.55 [pp. 267–8]). Bourgeois housewives, however,
were expected to be knowledgeable about shopping so that they could keep
an eye on their servants. In the satirical poem “Le miroir de marriage” by
Chaucer’s French contemporary, Eustache Deschamps (?1346–1406), a
bride’s mother advises her son-in-law to allow his young wife to go to the
markets and shops herself, so that she will learn how shopping is done and
how much everything costs. When she has learned, she will be able to send
her valet or her chamber-woman to do the shopping instead, and to inspect
their accounts knowledgably, and not be taken in by inflated charges
(Deschamps 1894, Ch. 36: 114–15).

SHOPS, 1000–1350
In the pre-Plague period, soaring urban populations led to high rents and
correspondingly small shops, especially in premier locations. In England,
rows of small shops are recorded in York by 1086 and in Winchester by the
early twelfth century (Palliser et al. 2000: 185; Britnell 2006: 117). In
thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century London, Cheapside shops generally
measured less than 2 meters wide by about 3 meters deep (6 × 10 feet)
(Keene 2006: 131).
Most retail shops followed a standard pattern. In England, shops typically
consisted of a ground-floor room in a multi-storied, timber-framed building.
Beside the narrow door, one or more unglazed windows opened onto the
street to admit light and to allow passers-by to see the wares. Often the
window-shutters were hinged at top and bottom, the lower shutter
converting by day into a wooden sales counter, and the upper shutter into an
awning (Clark 2000: 64–5; Schofield 1994: 205 [no. 141]; Keene 2006:
131; Stenning 1985: 35–9; cf. Salzman 1967: 418–19). In the fourteenth
century especially, many such shops were built in uniform ranges under a
single roof (Schofield 1994: 55–6, 71–3, 153 [no. 2]).
In Italian towns, shops were often housed in arcades and rows. In early
fourteenth-century Padua, shops and stalls for the sale of cloth, furs, good-
quality clothing, ironmongery, and salt were housed in the porticos of all
the public buildings adjoining the main square (Giovanni da Nono 2000:
19–21; Hyde 1966: 42–3). In Genoa in the 1290s, an anonymous lay poet
rhapsodized over the dazzling glimpses of imported luxury cloths, feathers,
furs, spices, and jewels to be seen in the rows of upscale shops:

And how the shops are set out along the streets! Those of the same craft are nearly all together.
The shops are full of this fine merchandise … And indeed, it pleases me more to see the shops
open with goods on show, than to see them shut: on Sundays and feast days, if it was decent, I
would never want them shut, as I have great desire to look inside.
Anonimo Genovese 2000: 22

In some English towns, behind the expensive commercial frontages on

major shopping streets, were privately-owned, enclosed bazaars, known as
“selds.” They provided small retail outlets for traders who could not afford
a shop in a premier location. In London’s St. Martin’s Seld, for example, the
twenty-five trading “stations” that lay on either side of a narrow passage
opening onto Cheapside measured at most 1.5 × 2.5 meters each (about 5 ×
8 feet) (Keene 2006: 133–5). As in the Paris Halles, London’s selds and
retail shops were furnished with counters, tables, chests, and cupboards for
displaying and storing goods (Cal Hust Wills, vol. 1: 56, 66, 155, 259, 319,
477, 489; Cal Letter-Book E: 134). In 1197 the chronicler Roger of Howden
wrote of merchants who hung up black or red curtains to dim the light,
“whereby the buyers’ eyes are often deceived in the choice of good cloth”
(Davis 2012: 216), and one London seld was known by 1220 as the
“Painted Seld,” presumably because its painted decoration was unusual
(Keene 2006: 135). Otherwise, there is little evidence for the decoration of
English shops and selds in this period, but few would have had room for
purely decorative displays (cf. Keene 1990: 34–9).
Decorative shop signs did not yet exist. At Paris in 1267 Roger Bacon
wrote a treatise on semiotics (De signis) in which he discussed “signs” of
all kinds, and he revisited the subject at Oxford in 1292 in his Compendium
studii theologiae. In both works, Bacon noted that taverns customarily
displayed the hoop of a wine barrel (circulus vini) as a sign that they had
wine to sell (see Figure 3.6), and that artisans such as bakers displayed
examples of their goods in their windows as a sign of what they had for
sale. In neither work, however, did Bacon mention any use of figured
commercial signs (Fredborg et al. 1978, especially sections 1, 7, 27, 147;
Bacon 1988, especially sections 57, 117, 127, and n. 251). Although some
houses in Paris had sculpted images on their façades by the thirteenth
century (Camille 2000: 4–5, 14–15, 20, 21 [fig. 1.7], 23–4), figured
commercial signs, hung from poles, evidently were not yet in use.
In London, references to signs appear in civic records in the second
quarter of the fourteenth century (Cal Plea and Mem Rolls, 1323–64: 125;
Cal Hust Wills, 1: 472, 566, 567, 672, 699), as do depictions of alestakes
(the broom-like poles displayed by alehouses) in the Smithfield Decretals
(c. 1325–50), and in the image of “Constantinople” in the Luttrell Psalter (c.
1330–45). The latter also shows three poles with hanging signs (Davis
2012: 245, Fig. 16 [BL, MS Royal 10.E.IV, f. 114r]; Brown 2006: 73 [BL,
Add. MS 42130, f. 164v]; cf. Camille 2000: 18). However, these London
signs and, probably, the Luttrell Psalter’s sign poles were used not by shops,
but by drinking houses—especially wine taverns, which were often housed
in cellars in this period (Schofield 1994: 79)—and possibly by commercial
inns, to identify themselves to travelers. Such establishments probably also
had broader façades that could more effectively display a sign than most
shops in the pre-Plague period.

SHOPS, 1350–1450
In the post-Plague period, the fall in population forced landlords to slash
rents and offer other amenities to attract tenants. In London, for example,
the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s contracted in 1370 for the construction
of a block of eighteen shops, each with its own fireplace, a very luxurious
feature (Salzman 1967: 443–4; Schofield 1994: 185–6, no. 90; Keene 2006:
136). In a row of thirteen shops in Paternoster Row, built in 1387–8 by the
trustees of London Bridge, eleven had fireplaces, the woodwork was
varnished, and the shops were painted with ochre (LMA,
CLA/007/FN/01/018, Roll 6 [1386–7], pp. 205–6; Roll 7 [1387–8], pp.
224–7, 229; Roll 8 [1388–89], pp. 277–8). Shop sizes also generally
increased; many London shops now had frontages of 3.35–3.66 meters (11–
12 feet) or more (Salzman 1967: 441–3 [1369], 443–4 [1370], 446–8
[1373]). Some had a showroom for displaying goods, a separate workroom
or office, and a warehouse for storing merchandise above-ground instead of
in a dark and damp cellar (Salzman 1967: 478–82, 483–5; Keene 2006:
148; see also Schofield 1994: 185 [no. 87], 205–6 [no. 142]; Cal Letter-
Book A: 217). Developments such as these led to the decline of selds as
retail outlets (Schofield 1994: 73–81; Schofield and Stell 2000: 387–9).
In 1375 London’s tavern-keepers were ordered, as a safety measure, not
to hang out a pole bearing their sign or leaves that was more than seven feet
long, but there is no mention of shops having hazardous signs (Riley 1868:
386–7; cf. Cal Letter-Book H: 12; and Liber Albus: 453). By 1426,
however, when John Lydgate translated and expanded Guillaume de
Digulleville’s poem, the Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (Pelerinage de la vie
humaine), he described shop signs decorated with lions, eagles, griffons,
and other images as a familiar sight, a description that did not occur in the
original text of 1355 (Lydgate 1899–1904: lines 20, 396–20, 404, p. 544;
xiii).
To attract customers, many shops offered not only appealing displays of
decorations and goods, but also pretty saleswomen. “[T]o tell the truth,”
John Gower declared in Mirour de l’Omme, “the retail shopkeeping trade
belongs most rightly to women” (Gower 1992: 345; cf. Keene 2006: 138–
9). John Lydgate wrote of a woman ale-seller in Canterbury who used her
beauty to lure male customers, with her “callyng look” and bare breasts
(Lydgate 1934: 429–32). Such women might use scent or cosmetics as an
extra allure; a treatise on the five senses reworked by the celebrated London
preacher William Lichfield (d. 1448) warned of the seductive appeal of
women who used “swet anoyntmentes (sweet ointments) to stir men to lust”
(BL, Royal MS 8 C i, f. 129v). Some shops, in fact, simply served as
camouflage for prostitution. In 1385 Elizabeth, wife of Henry Moring, lived
as a prostitute and procuress “under colour of the craft of broidery, which
she pretended to follow” (Riley 1868: 484–6; cf. 532–3). She resembles the
young married woman in Chaucer’s “Cook’s Tale” who was a prostitute but
kept a shop for the sake of appearances (Chaucer 1987: “Cook’s Tale,” last
two lines).
Other shopkeepers employed aggressive sales tactics to obtain customers.
In Piers Plowman, Envy admits to slandering commercial rivals and their
wares to steal customers (Langland 1975: Passus V, lines 129–33). In
Gower’s Mirour de l’Omme, a mercer pulls passers-by into his shop,
shrieking, “Step up and come in! Beds, kerchiefs, ostrich feathers, silks,
satins, and imported cloths: Come in, I will show them to you, and if you
want to buy, you need go no farther. Here are the best in the street!” (Gower
1992: 332). More genteel establishments, however, avoided raucous
behavior. Lichfield’s treatise on the senses observed that a poor peddler
selling trifles often made more noise than a rich merchant selling fine goods
(BL, Royal MS 8 C i, f. 124v).
As in the past, dishonest trading was rife. Some shopkeepers showed
defective merchandise under poor lighting to make it look better. Others
dressed up shoddy wares as good, “as when a chapman maketh his chaffare
seme good with oute and woot wel that it is false with ynne and natheles he
sellith it after hit semeth outward and prayseth it falseliche” (as when a
trader makes his merchandise look good on the outside and knows well that
it is not good within, and nonetheless sells it according to its outward
appearance and praises it falsely) (BL, Harley MS 45, ff. 58v, 64r, 71r–v).
The English Dominican John Bromyard (d. c. 1352) told of wool-merchants
who dampened their wool before weighing it; of tawyers who furbished up
old and rotten skins to sell as new; and of vendors who deliberately
miscounted change. They justified their deceit on the grounds of caveat
emptor: “The buyers have their own senses and intellect … they can buy the
things or leave them!” (Davis 2012: 77–81). Crooked vendors claimed that
this was how the market operated, and that honesty would drive them out of
business (Jacob’s Well [c. 1440], in Davis 2012: 120).
However, beginning in the late fourteenth century, the efforts of London’s
better shops to cultivate a more decorative, decorous, spacious, and orderly
appearance were attracting elite men and women to visit the shops
themselves. In January 1382, for example, a Cornish gentleman called John
de Dinham came to London to attend the wedding of Richard II and Anne
of Bohemia, and his travel accounts show that he made the rounds of his
London tradesmen in person, paying bills and placing orders. The following
year Dinham (by now a knight) brought his wife to London for a ten-day
visit (February 24–March 6). Both of them went shopping, and their
purchases reflect some striking gender differences: Lady Dinham’s included
fine fabrics, buckram, thread, veils, saffron, soap, treacle, and gold foil,
while Sir John’s included a cap and a pair of gloves, two pairs of knives, a
buckler, arms and armor, bowstrings, and a belt (zona) for arrows (Truro,
Cornwall County Record Office, AR 37/41/1, AR 37/44). At the same time,
Continental artists began to depict well-dressed men and women visiting
finely-appointed shops. For example, a late fourteenth-century manuscript
from Lombardy of the Tacuinum sanitatis shows a lady having her sleeve
fitted in a tailor’s shop (Mitchell 1965: plate 117); a painting by Petrus
Christus dated 1449 depicts an aristocratic young couple buying a wedding
ring in a goldsmith’s shop (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
accession number 1975.1.110); and a copy of c. 1460 of Nicolas Oresme’s
translation of Aristotle’s Ethics, Politics, and Economics shows gentlemen
browsing the stalls of a bootmaker, a draper, and a goldsmith in an elegant
arcade (Lombard-Jourdan 2009: 186 and plate 4).
For such people—who could have chosen, as in the past, to summon
shopkeepers to serve them at home (see, e.g., Riley 1868: 440)—shopping
was not a necessity, but a pleasure. The young wife in Deschamps’ “Miroir
de mariage” becomes addicted to shopping. She tells her husband that she
needs to buy all sorts of things, both ordinary (spindles, distaff, thread, pins,
gardening tools) and exotic (coral paternosters, needles from Antioch, silk,
fine buttons, and furs). She stays out late, paws over all the merchandise,
haggles over goods that she has no intention of buying, and sniffs out the
best bargains. For this woman, shopping was clearly a deliciously sensory
experience, and also a form of power. By leaving her house with a full
purse, and against her husband’s wishes, she flaunts her personal and
economic freedom. Matching wits with vendors and hunting for bargains
provide her with the excitement of competition and enable her to triumph in
her own expertise (Deschamps 1894, Ch. 37: 117–21). Shopping also
offered men and women sensual as well as sensory pleasures in learning the
latest fashions, news, or gossip, and in meeting other people, including
potential sexual partners.
 CONCLUSION
The early medieval period in the Latin West was dominated by open-air
markets and workshops, not retail shops. These early marketplaces
primarily served their small local populations with the necessities of life.
Although there was some long-distance trade, most goods were processed
or manufactured locally by artisans working from their small dwellings.
From the eleventh to the early fourteenth century, rapidly-growing towns
featured packed marketplaces and a widening array of artisanal workshops.
Urban retail shops can be widely documented by the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, but they were generally small, cramped, and utilitarian. In the
post-Plague period, however, with the fall in urban property values, shops
became larger and better-appointed. Wealthy men and women still avoided
street markets, but they began to visit upscale retail shops for jewelry, fine
clothing and footwear, textiles, weapons, and other luxury goods. Such
shops, with their attractive displays and decorations and genteel ambience,
appealed both to the senses and the sensibilities of their elite customers.
 CHAPTER FOUR
_____________________________________

The Senses in Religion:

Liturgy, Devotion, and
Deprivation
BÉATRICE CASEAU

INTRODUCTION
During the Middle Ages, in Europe and around the Mediterranean, religion
structured the individual and society. Depending on their cultural
background and religious traditions, worshipers humbly bowed before God
by touching the floor with one knee, two knees, the forehead, or the whole
body (Schimmel 1994: 141; Ps 138 (137): 2; Schmitt 1990: 290, 295).
Touch played a central role in this very frequent religious gesture, used
during private and public prayer. Whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim,
religious celebrations were sensorial experiences. Christian liturgies
involved all of the senses, either in a passive mode, when receiving
sensations—seeing, hearing, smelling—or in an active mode, by deliberate
participation—looking, listening, touching, and tasting. Besides
philosophical and exegetical treatises, we have two types of sources on the
senses in religion: those describing rituals and cult places, and those using
the vocabulary of the senses to grasp abstract concepts and describe
spiritual realities and experiences. In these texts, metaphors based on the
sensory experiences of the body were used to portray good and evil, God
and Satan, heaven and hell. Christians also developed the notion of inner
senses, spiritual doubles of the external senses, that were able to capture
immaterial realities (Canévet et al. 1993; Gavrilyuk and Coakley 2012).
Thus, the senses operated either physically through sensory perceptions
created during the participation in rituals and devotions, or mentally
through imagination and discourse. In this chapter I will draw most of my
examples from Eastern and Western Christianity and focus on the way each
of these two cultural and liturgical spheres developed. Because the
Christian faith includes a God who chose to be incarnate and was
resurrected in a human body, the senses were potentially sanctified and
often considered worthy tools to gain knowledge of God in this world and
in the next. They were the means of learning about God’s presence, and
they enabled Christians to fully enjoy the celebration of God.

FIGURE 4.1: Istanbul, Turkey, Hagia Sofia church: the

Byzantine emperor in front of Christ. Photograph: Béatrice
Caseau.

All of the senses were invited to the feast, but some more than others.
Hearing and seeing were the main senses involved as Christians came to
hear the Word of God and follow religious celebrations with their eyes. Yet,
seeing and hearing were clearly not the only senses called for during the
Christian liturgy and around the cult of saints. Although they were less
often emphasized, touch, smell, and taste also played an important role in
connecting the faithful to spiritual realities. Educated Christians of the
medieval period viewed their own body through the lens of philosophical
traditions. They largely accepted the hierarchy of the senses created since
Aristotle (Johansen 1997). While seeing and hearing ranked higher than
smelling, tasting, and touching, in Christian religious practices the latter
two senses enabled an active participation of both laypeople and clerics.
Touch was particularly important in medieval Christianity. The faithful,
entering a wealthy church, were invited to make the sign of the cross on
their body, kneel or prostrate themselves on marble floors, kiss an icon, or
light a candle. There is no doubt that touch played a central role in personal
devotions, but the sensory experience of a Christian entering a church is
best described under the concept of synaisthesis, “joint perception.” The
eyes and the sense of smell were the first to be engaged, with the sense of
hearing, but touch and to a lesser extent taste were involved too. Christian
thinkers and designers of church interiors were aware of that combined
sensory effect. They usually chose to create a space filled with colors and
lights, where very rich sensory experiences would take place. Similarly, in
synagogues and mosques the artistic designs around the Ark or Torah niche
or around the mihrab (indicating the qibla, the direction to pray towards
Mecca) drew the eyes to the focal points of attention. The quality of
religious buildings and the care taken to beautify specific areas or important
artifacts, such as books, underlined their religious significance. The same
could be said about medieval pulpits in churches and synagogues or the
minbar in mosques, which emphasized the importance of hearing the Word
of God and preaching.
The involvement of the senses in religious experience evolved through
the regulation of what was commendable and what was forbidden. Different
cultural choices eventually created specific sensory emphases. Eastern and
Western Christianity, for example, developed in different directions when it
came to favoring one of the senses, as will be discussed below. Moreover,
the awareness of these differences built a sense of religious identity. “There
is no perception which is not full of memories,” as Bergson observed (1988:
3). “With the immediate and present data of our senses, we mingle a
thousand details of our past experience.” In religious practice, personal
sensory experiences created memories which were shared by communities
and transmitted as values. These values, charged with emotions, account for
the sense of righteousness which prevailed in communities of different
religions living side by side, often critical of the traditions of others.
Up to a certain point, it is possible to recapture the visual, acoustic, and
olfactive environment of religious buildings, but we work with fragmentary
evidence. We can take note of the gestures expected of priests and
worshipers in liturgical rites, but we must ascertain whether accounts of
these actions are normative. Pilgrims, travelers, and visitors sometimes
recorded their sensory emotions, but those were individual experiences.
Polemical treatises registered what the “others” did wrong, but the political
context of war, the wish for cultural dominance, or control of one’s
population, can also account for their intolerance. Corbin (2005) has
warned us of the difficulty of writing a cultural history of the senses, and
especially the risk of generalization. One must be particularly aware of how
biblical references model discourse in the Middle Ages.

MULTISENSORIALITY IN CHRISTIAN
LITURGIES
Since the terrestrial liturgy strove to imitate the heavenly one, led by
singing angels, liturgies developed into more solemn, more fragrant, and
more musical rituals. Medieval Christians could take in with their eyes the
beauty of churches and ceremonies, hear the sermons, enjoy the singing,
smell the perfume of incense, touch and taste the body of Christ in the
Eucharist. Not only were medieval churches adorned with paintings,
mosaics, and colorful marbles and furnished with precious sacred vessel
and textiles, but the rituals developed intentionally into aesthetically
pleasing ceremonies (Florensky [1918] 2002; Palazzo 2010). The
importance of sensory experiences in the Christian religion is well
illustrated by the example of two rituals: baptism and the mass.
Newborns and new converts were admitted into the Christian community
in the same manner: by touch. Augustine explains that the bishop traces the
sign of the cross on them, lays his hands on their head, and places a grain of
salt in their mouth. These gestures remained the same in the Middle Ages,
albeit with regional nuances. The sign of the cross was sometimes called a
seal, but unlike Jews and Muslims, who marked little boys physically by
circumcision, in medieval Christianity the body was touched but not
marked.
In the late antique church and still in the early Middle Ages, baptismal
ceremonies were very formal events, done especially on the eve of Easter in
magnificent buildings called baptisteries. Baptism was mostly given to
adults, after a lengthy preparation which included exorcisms and the
teaching of prayers. The ceremony itself was not revealed beforehand to the
catechumens. They must have been overwhelmed by the sights and smells
of their baptism, their memory impressed by what their senses had
experienced: nakedness, a rubbing of the whole body with exorcistic oil, a
bath during which their head was plunged under the water three times (in
the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit), then another unction
with sweet-smelling oil on the sensory organs, dressing in a snow-white
robe, and finally holding a candle in their hands in a procession to the
church where they participated for the first time in the liturgy, including
holy communion. In a very theatrical ceremony, the catechumen
experienced regeneration, symbolically going through death and
resurrection. All of the senses were solicited in this ritual. The ceremony
took place at night in illuminated baptisteries. The prayers were said out
loud and sung. The sound of flowing water surging from the mouth of gold
and silver sculptures added to the sounds of prayers in the baptistery of the
basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and in other baptisteries with water
adduction. The space of the Lateran baptistery was fragrant, thanks to the
presence of a basin of finest gold, where at Eastertide 200 lb. of balsam was
burnt, and a censer of pure gold adorned with forty-nine green gems (Davis
1989: 16–17). In Reims, for the baptism of Clovis, king of the Franks, the
whole city prepared for the event: Bishop Remigius “ordered the baptismal
pool to be readied. The public squares were draped with colored cloths, the
churches were adorned with white hangings, the baptistery was prepared,
sticks of incense gave off clouds of perfume, sweet-smelling candles
gleamed bright and the holy place of baptism was filled with divine
fragrance” (Gregory of Tours 1974: 141).
Inside baptisteries and churches, fragrance was provided by oil lamps and
incense burners. The scent of incense came to be closely associated with
paradise, a place where plants gave off a wonderful perfume. Apocryphal
literature, visions, and reports of near-death experiences concurred in the
image of a fragrant Paradise where saints fed on perfumes, creating a strong
bond between holiness and sweet odors. A sweet-smelling church
immediately told worshipers they were entering a place connected to
heaven. “To encounter a scent was to encounter proof of a material
presence, a trail of existence which could be traced to its source” (Classen
et al. 2007: 341). For medieval Christians, the fragrance of incense and
perfumed oil lamps pointed to the presence of a sweet-smelling God in the
church. In the olfactory imagination of late antique and medieval
Christians, earthly spices and perfume-giving trees originated in Paradise,
and had either been stolen by Adam when he was expelled from Eden, or,
more poetically, they came from the tears Eve poured onto the earth after
that tragic event.
The decor of baptisteries reflected the belief in the participation of
heaven in rituals on earth. In Ravenna’s baptisteries, all the important
residents of Paradise, the prophets and apostles, were depicted around the
central medallion showing Jesus being baptized in the Jordan river, and thus
were watching over the newly baptized. The multisensory experience of
baptism created a lasting impression.
 FIGURE 4.2: Bourges, France, cathedral: angel swinging a
censer. Photograph: Béatrice Caseau.

If baptism was an intense sensory experience, so too was the holy liturgy.
Liturgical traditions were numerous, especially in the early Middle Ages,
but making the ritual more beautiful and more complex was common to the
development of all of them (Baumstark 2011). Imperial or royal patronage
helped create awe-inspiring buildings, meant to make the visitor think about
the glory of God. Such was the case of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in
Constantinople, whose cupola impressed visitors with its forty windows
from which sunlight flowed into the nave some 30 meters below. Regarding
that church, Paul the Silentiary wrote: “Everything fills the eye with
wonder” (Mango 1986: 89). The solemn processions, the perfumes poured
in the numerous oil lamps, the shimmering mosaics, the richly embroidered
ecclesiastical vestments, the precious metals of the liturgical objects, all
played a role to create awe in the worshipers. The Byzantine liturgy was a
saturated sensual experience (Pentcheva 2010: 43; Taft [1977] 1997, 2006).
In 987, the Byzantine emperor received pagan Russian ambassadors, sent
by Vladimir, the prince of Kiev. The patriarch of Constantinople

bade the clergy assemble, and they performed the customary rites. They burned incense and the
choirs sang hymns. The emperor accompanied the Russes to the church, and placed them in a
wide space, calling their attention to the beauty of the edifice, the chanting, and the pontifical
services and the ministry of the deacons, while he explained to them the worship of his God.
The Russes were astonished, and in their wonder praised the Greek ceremonial.

They reported back to Vladimir: “We knew not whether we were in heaven
or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we
are at a loss to describe it” (Cross and Shobowitz-Wetzor 1953: 111).
Giving the impression that the church was a place connected to heaven was
deliberate. The Byzantines believed that the choirs and the warmth of
human voices praising God provided an echo of the continual celebration of
God in heaven led by angels. The liturgy at the Hagia Sophia cathedral was
impressive with its twenty-five cantors and numerous clerics.
The purpose of liturgy and church interiors was to offer multisensory
experiences through which the presence of God could be felt. Sight played a
dominant role in this endeavor. Not only were the worshipers invited to
follow the rituals with their eyes, but the interior ornamentation of churches
also included images which were seen as the Bible of the illiterate, narrating
stories from the New Testament or saints’ lives. The religious utility of
images was, however, contested, as images could also be construed as an
expensive distraction. The presence of images and their role in Christian
liturgy was a matter of debate, but the Latin Church usually admitted the
teaching value of images, following Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604). Yet
images were more than a decor for the liturgy and their status developed
differently in the Latin world and in the Byzantine cultural sphere. Both in
the East and in the West, some images had the reputation of performing
miracles or being acheiropoieta, images not made by humans and thus
miraculous. In the Byzantine world, the devotions that developed around
images were condemned during the two periods of iconoclasm, but after
843 murals filled the space of churches. Portable icons changed in
accordance with the Church calendar became part of the liturgy. Fixed icons
positioned on the chancel barrier before the sanctuary received censing and
signs of veneration. The Second Council of Nicaea decided that kissing
icons and acts of proskynesis (veneration) were proper, but Carolingian
theologians thought that such veneration to an image amounted to idolatry
and they refused to grant the status of sacred object to icons (Boulnois
2008; Brubaker and Haldon 2011). In Byzantium, icons, clearly marked
with the name of a saint, were believed to be the locus of the saint’s
presence, in competition with reliquaries. As prayers were addressed to the
saint depicted on the icon and not to the piece of wood, no idolatry was
involved in the eyes of Byzantine theologians. Touch even more than sight
became an essential part of Eastern Christians’ religious life, as touching
and kissing the icons became usual gestures made by worshipers entering a
church. Lay devotions focused on these objects, leaving to the priests the
care of the rituals occurring on the altar behind the iconostasis (Belting
1994: 172).
Both in the East and in the West, kissing was a frequent gesture to show
affection to people and veneration to objects (Schmitt 1990). It was usual to
give the kiss of peace during mass, to kiss the hand of the bishop or the
abbot. However, when it came to images, sight mattered to Western
Christians, while touch was the natural devotional gesture for Eastern
Christians. When Western pilgrims described the holy sites they visited,
they emphasized what they had seen; when Orthodox pilgrims wrote their
pilgrimage accounts, they mentioned the relics they had kissed. The Russian
pilgrim Ignatius of Smolensk, who visited the Hagia Sophia cathedral in
1389, observed: “We kissed the table on which the Relics of the Passion of
Christ are placed, and then [the body of] St. Arsenius the Patriarch and the
table at which Abraham welcomed Christ manifest in Trinity, as well as the
iron pallet on which Christ’s martyrs were burned” (Majeska 1984: 92).
Sight and touch were also valued differently in the East and in the West
when it came to the most sacred of all sacraments: the Eucharist. The
sanctuary was open to view in both East and West during late antiquity,
even if separated from the nave by a low chancel barrier to mark its utmost
sanctity. In the East, however, access to this area of the church was more
strictly controlled. The council of Trullo (691–2) decided that “absolutely
no one from amongst the laity shall be allowed to enter within the holy
sanctuary,” with the exception of the emperor coming with gifts to deposit
on the altar (Canons of the Council 1995: 151 [canon 69]). As early as the
sixth century, the placing of icons on chancel barriers partially blocked the
view of the sanctuary from the nave. Starting in the middle Byzantine
period, the building of the templon (a structure with icons) in Byzantine
churches and the erection of high iconostases in Russian churches at the end
of the Middle Ages physically separated sanctuary and nave. When the
doors or curtains were closed, the view of the sanctuary from the nave was
completely blocked (Durand et al. 2010; Gerstel 2006). This architectural
development, which took place in almost all Orthodox churches, although
at a different pace, meant that Byzantine, Coptic, or Russian worshipers
could no longer see the ritual on the altar. The sanctuary was compared to
the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem and the screen to the Temple
veil: the sight of what took place on the altar was a mystery concealed from
worshipers and reserved for priests and deacons. Nicetas Stéthatos (d. c.
1090) declares: “How can the layman, to whom it is forbidden, contemplate
… the mysteries of God accomplished with trembling by his priests?” For
Nicetas, even monks should close the doors of their senses, in order not to
glance at the mysteries during the most sacred moment of the liturgy, and
they should not let any profane thought enter their mind (Walter 1993: 204).
Priests were allowed to watch the transformation of bread into the body of
Christ, but they had to be mindful of what they were doing. A Coptic text
explains that the closed screen was added to keep the eyes of priests
concentrated on the altar and not defiled by the sight of women (Bolman in
Gerstel 2006: 95).
In the West, although some boundary markers also separated the
sanctuary from the nave, including Romanesque and Gothic screens (Jung
in Gerstel 2006), the altar remained open to view and the ability to follow
with one’s eyes the consecration of the elements was valued. Writing
against heretics who did not agree with the multiplication of masses, or with
watching the offering of the Eucharist, Peter the Venerable (d. 1156)
explains that the Lord created the Eucharist to arouse the affection of the
faithful because “the matter was so great that human souls should be moved
to thinking of it, loving it, embracing it not feebly but markedly, it was
fitting and right that the memory of the humanity and death of Christ should
be aided not only by sound through the ears but by sight through the eyes”
(Appleby 1998; Peter the Venerable 1968: 117–18). Peter the Venerable
valued sight more than hearing because of the weak memory of humans. He
cites Horace’s Ars poetica to make his point: “What enters through the ears
stirs the mind more feebly than what is placed before the trustworthy eyes
and hence conveyed directly to the watcher.” Sight was so valued in the
Roman liturgy that it was decided to elevate the host for all to see. Even
religious orders that wanted to separate lay people from their members who
were seated in choir stalls shielded from view by a screen made sure that
the laity would be able to see the elevation of the host, at least through a
window in the screen. For the great majority of laypersons who did not dare
take communion, except at Easter and on their deathbed, seeing the host
was another form of communion, understood as “spiritual communion.”
The desire for communion was enough to create a manducatio spiritualis
(spiritual ingestion), both for William of Saint-Thierry and later Thomas of
Aquinas (Lamberts in Haquin 1999). Exposed on the altar for adoration, the
host attracted the attention of mystics who saw God in the consecrated
wafers. Stories circulated about bleeding hosts for those who doubted that
the bread had become flesh. At the cathedral of Orvieto, paintings by
Ugolino di Prete Ilario illustrate such a miracle (Duffy 1992: 95–107;
Rigaux in Bériou et al. 2009). Juliana of Mount-Cornillon (d. 1252), who
had a special devotion to the Eucharist and enjoyed above all the moment of
consecration, managed to convince the clergy to create a feast around the
Eucharist. In 1264, Pope Urban IV officially created the feast of Corpus
Christi, which included a procession of the host in a monstrance (Bériou et
al. 2009; Haquin 1999; Rubin 1991). Seeing the Eucharist became the way
for laypeople to participate in the religious ceremony. Elevation prayers
were written for them to say at that time. The confessor of Dorothea of
Montau, a fourteenth-century German visionary mystic, wrote: “Compelled
by the odor of this vivifying sacrament, she had from her childhood to the
end of her life the desire to see the blessed host. And if she managed to
view it a hundred times in one day, as sometimes happened, she still
retained the desire to view it more often” (Bynum 1987: 55).
 The ringing of bells to indicate the moment of the consecration enabled
urban dwellers to go from one mass to another just to see the host. Even in
the countryside, clergy members expected peasants to stop working and
kneel for a brief prayer when they heard the sound. Thus, bells became an
important feature of Western Christianity and invaded the soundscape of
Christian lands (Arnold and Goodson 2012).

FIGURE 4.3:Damascus, Syria: mosque with minaret.

Photograph: Béatrice Caseau.
 FIGURE 4.4: Monreale, Sicily: church bells. Photograph:
Béatrice Caseau.

Territorial control went hand in hand with regulations concerning

religious sounds, and the ability to use public space in a vocal or musical
manner was justly understood as a right of religious expression. Starting in
the eighth century, in areas controlled by Muslims, it was forbidden for
Christians to display the cross on buildings, organize processions, produce
sounds to call for prayer by voice, wooden clackers, or bells, and even sing
loudly in church. Christians and Jews were dhimmis, protected but second-
class citizens allowed to practice their religion privately and quietly if they
paid a special tax (Griffith 2008). In Muslim cities, the building of tall
minarets next to mosques allowed the call to prayer to resonate five times a
day. As the timing of the muezzins was not coordinated, the sound of voices
calling for prayer spread in the air above urban areas, creating a very
specific acoustic environment which made travelers know immediately that
Islam controlled the public space.
During the period of Islamic conquest in Spain, bells had become so
symbolic that not only was the sound of Christian bells silenced, the bells
themselves were captured and displayed inside North African Almohad
mosques (Constable 2010: 94). Where cities changed from Islamic to
Christian rule, such as in Spain during the Reconquista and in Sicily, the
return of the sound of bells marked a political change but did not lead to an
immediate silencing of the muezzin. This change depended on local rulers
and on the economic influence of the Muslim communities. At the end of
the twelfth century, Ibn Jubayr, a Muslim pilgrim, was surprised to hear the
call of prayer, but also drums and trumpets accompanying the worshipers to
mosques in cities of Norman Sicily (Ibn Jubair 1952: 348–53). In 1265,
Jaime I of Aragon left the Muslims of the recently conquered Murcia free to
continue their public call to prayer, with the exception of the mosque next
to his palace as he did not want it to interrupt his sleep. In 1266 Pope
Clement IV reproached the king for allowing Muslims to “publicly cry out”
the name of their prophet, and during the Council of Vienne in 1311,
Clement V asked Christian rulers not to let the loud Islamic call to prayer
continue in their lands (Constable 2010: 75–6). Still, in Aragon the sharing
of the urban soundscape continued and only very slowly came to a halt
during the last centuries of the Middle Ages. This issue of religious sounds
mattered to both sides, because music and singing are two fundamental
characteristics of religious ceremonies.
Musica movet affectus: music creates emotions, and it calls the senses to
a different state, wrote Isidore of Seville in the seventh century (Isidore of
Seville 2006: 95). This power of music to move, please, and convert was
well-known to learned Latin clerics who had read Augustine’s Confessions.
He recalls the influence of music on his soul: “How I wept during your
hymns and songs! I was deeply moved by the music and sweet chants of
your Church. The sounds flowed into my ears and the truth was distilled
into my heart. This caused my feelings of devotion to overflow” (Augustine
of Hippo 1991: 207–8; Confessions 9.33). Although he felt grateful for the
emotions that led to his conversion, Augustine was worried about the
pleasure he experienced from a sweet and measured voice. He realized that
he took more pleasure in the music than in the words. Still, he decided that
the benefit of church music outweighs the peril of sin: “On the whole, I am
inclined—though I am not propounding any irrevocable opinion—to
approve the custom of singing in church, that by the pleasure of the ear the
weaker minds may be roused to a feeling of devotion” (Augustine of Hippo
1993: 198; Confessions 9.33). The singing of the Psalms and the chanting
of the divine office became a common practice in Christian churches. Many
writers, such as Ambrose of Milan (d. 397), Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373),
Romanos Melodos (d. c. 556), and Adam of Saint-Victor (1110–92), to
name a few, wrote liturgical poetry. Some prayers, such as the Stabat Mater
of Jacopone da Todi (d. 1306), became very popular. The wish to embellish
the liturgy through music accounts for the number of liturgical prayers set
to music.
The voices of children were particularly enjoyed and boy singers were
asked to sing in responsorial chanting in cathedrals in the East and in the
West (Boynton and Rice 2008: 40–4). In Rome, the schola cantorum
composed of children and adults took charge of singing the liturgy (Dyer in
Boynton and Rice 2008: 19–22). This increase in trained singers meant that
the congregation was no longer required to sing, but rather just to listen. As
the singers were all male, the singing of women disappeared from parish
churches and cathedrals in the early Middle Ages and remained only in
convents (Flynn 2006: 771).
While plainchant was still common in most churches until the thirteenth
century, polyphony started at the cathedral of Paris (Wright 1989). Perotin,
who lived at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century,
composed polyphonic music with up to four different voices and lines of
music. This development towards complex music during the liturgy was
controversial. It meant that only proficient singers could sing the liturgy. In
the later Middle Ages, liturgy increasingly became a performative ritual
meant to please the ears. In 1483, the Dominican pilgrim Felix Faber noted
with disapproval that the Franciscans of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in
Venice sang the office in polyphony “for which reason young people and
ladies flock there not so much because of divine service but in order to hear
the melodies and discantors” (Howard and Moretti 2009: 83).
Church music was pleasurable and the aristocracy expected to enjoy this
sensorial aspect of the liturgy and paid to enhance it. Royal or ducal chapels
could afford to attract talented musicians. In the fifteenth century, San
Marco, the chapel of the Venetian doges, had a singing school for eight
boys, two choirs to alternate singing, and a maestro di capella, who was
also a renowned composer. Two fixed organs installed in the church during
the fourteenth century could accompany the singers or play solo. The
procurators of San Marco insured that the liturgy was a musical feast
(Howard and Moretti 2009: 20–5). The addition of organs to churches was
an innovation separating Eastern and Western Christianity. Only the voice
was acceptable inside churches in the East. Fixed organs made their
entrance inside wealthy Latin churches perhaps as early as the tenth century
and became common by the end of the Middle Ages, when even parish
churches paid to have an organ to accompany religious ceremonies.
Music also filled the streets of the cities during festive processions,
which could be very colorful events, stimulating sight, hearing, and the
sense of smell. On festive days, portable organs, trumpets, and fifes could
accompany the singers in procession. In Venice, for the feast of Saint
Anthony, banners were brought to the procession, while children dressed as
angels carried images of the saint’s miracles and singers filled the space
with song (Howard and Moretti 2009: 84). Laypeople watched as members
of the clergy came out in the streets in a well-rehearsed and controlled
ceremony of formalized gestures. It could develop into a spectacle, when
preachers organized events outside of the traditional mass homily. At the
end of the Middle Ages, mystery plays associated theater and liturgy both in
the Latin West and in the Byzantine world, adding to the pleasure of
worshipers and to an already rich sensorium (Dominguez 2007). By their
reenactment of biblical events, these plays added a touch of concrete pathos
to the liturgy and reflected the development of spirituality towards the
meditation on redemptive suffering.

PERSONAL DEVOTION AND THE SENSES

By the Incarnation, God had made himself tangible. Until his ascension,
and with the exception of the “noli me tangere” (John 20:17), Jesus had
experienced touch. The woman with the issue of blood was healed because
she had touched his tunic. During the Last Supper, the disciple whom Jesus
loved was leaning on him (John 13:23–6). Even after the Resurrection,
Jesus encouraged incredulous Thomas to touch him.
 Bourges, France, cathedral: stained glass window
FIGURE 4.5:
showing an apostle reclining on Jesus at the Last Supper.
Photograph: Béatrice Caseau.

Christians naturally wished they could still touch Jesus and be healed,
and they developed substitute devotions based on touch. Lay worshipers
had much more active input in their choice of devotions than in the church
liturgy, which was organized for them. They enjoyed contact with sacred
objects or places, which they deemed filled with the power to protect them
and sometimes even cure them. To Jerusalem came pilgrims of the three
monotheistic faiths. Jews came to see the remains of the Temple or other
holy sites. Muslims traveled to see the traces of the prophet’s foot,
imprinted in the rock during his nocturnal journey and his ascension to
heaven. Christians came to see the place where Jesus had walked, where he
had died, and his empty tomb, proof of his resurrection. At the different
churches in and around Jerusalem, they could attend the liturgies
commemorating all the events of the last days of his life. Jacques de Vitry
(d. 1240) explains that Golgotha is pre-eminent among the holy places of
Jerusalem and has great powers to move the heart of visitors by the memory
of the Passion: “Here the Lord suffered for our Redemption … When
pilgrims visit this holy place … the agony of the Passion draws from them
tears of pity” (1896: 40).
In the three monotheistic religions, even if to a different degree, visiting
tombs and seeing, touching, or even kissing sacred objects were considered
gestures of veneration (Gitlitz and Davidson 2006; Meri 2002). Although
rigorists condemned the ziyāra, the Muslim pilgrimage to venerate tombs
and relics was very popular in Syria and Egypt. “The experience of
medieval Muslims, Christians and Jews is largely one of cross-fertilization
of similar yet unique devotional practices enriched by a shared belief in the
efficacy of holy places and persons” (Meri 2010: 101–2). Jews, Samaritans,
Christians, and Muslims (whenever no restrictions were imposed on them)
visited holy sites which were a shared heritage. When the Spanish Jew
Benjamin of Tudela traveled to the Holy Land between 1165 and 1173, he
visited the Cave of the Patriarchs, where a synagogue, a church, and a
mosque had been built in succession, one replacing the other. He also
visited the Tomb of Rachel and reported that Jews inscribed their names on
the stones (Adler 1907: 25). Marking a building with graffiti did not start
with the Middle Ages, but its popularity at Christian pilgrimage sites is
attested by numerous engravings of crosses: pilgrims wished to leave a
trace of their presence, in the hope to associate themselves permanently
with the holy site.
All Christian churches could be the sites of miracles, but some had the
reputation to bring back health thanks to miracles performed through the
intercession of the local saint. To understand the different devotion gestures
made by the faithful in healing sanctuaries we are greatly helped by miracle
stories. Written by clerics in order to promote the thaumaturgic reputation
of the saint, they provide contextualizing details concerning the sensory
approach to the cult of saints. From them we learn that gestures of devotion
included kissing columns and icons or touching tombs and reliquaries and
the lamps above them, and lighting candles and censers. Members of the
clergy used the oil burning in lamps above tombs and reliquaries to bless or
to cure. In the famous Egyptian sanctuary of Saint Menas, one miracle story
relates how a cleric in charge of the shrine took oil from the lamp burning
close to the saint’s body in order to make the sign of the cross on a
possessed man (Drescher 1946: 119). In some of these healing sanctuaries,
very sick or crippled persons came to practice incubation: they slept inside
the church, hoping to be visited in their dreams by the saints, who would
tell them what to do to be cured or who would touch them and directly cure
them. The saints often prescribed melted wax, called kerôtè, during the
visions experienced by those sleeping in their church. Sometimes mixed
with bread and oil, it could be placed on the sick part of the body, or drunk
in a potion, or eaten as a medicine (Sophronius 1975).
The association of perfumes and spices with Paradise on the one hand
and healing on the other explains the appearance of myroblites, saints who
miraculously gave perfumed oil with curative properties to worshipers
during their feasts. During the tenth century, after the church containing the
relics of Saint Demetrius in Thessaloniki had been destroyed, perfumed oil
started flowing out of his tomb through tubes that reached the faithful,
making him one of the most popular saints of the Byzantine world.
In pilgrimage churches but also in ordinary chapels or even at home or in
one’s monastic cell, touching the floor was the common way to beseech
God and his saints. Saints’ lives report a very high number of genuflections
that the saints engaged in daily: 300 a day for Saint Patrick, 12,000 for
Saint Columba. These numbers were meant to underscore their devotion
and extraordinary asceticism. Because they could be painful, genuflections
and metanies were also used as penance. In Irish penitentials, they could
replace days of fasting by a complex system of commutation (Angenendt et
al. 2001). The increase in devotional practices of this kind led to an
arithmetic of salvation: it became necessary to offer masses or a great
number of prayers or genuflections, to which lighting candles and
distributing alms could be added. To count prayers, Christians and Muslims
used strings of beads. In the later Middle Ages, lay people were encouraged
to pray the rosary that engaged worshipers in an active form of prayer,
where voice and hand each played a part (Mitchell 2009). In the Christian
East, the repetition of a simple prayer, the so-called prayer of Jesus, said in
rhythm with respiration, was a technique developed by early anchorites to
create a state of prayer. Gregory of Sinai (d. 1346) imported this practice at
Mount Athos, a peninsula with numerous monasteries and an active
spiritual center. This form of prayer was also adopted by monks and lay
people in Russia.
 FIGURE 4.6:Thessaloniki, Greece: Saint Demetrius’s crypt.
Photograph: Béatrice Caseau.

In the West, such devotions eventually came under criticism during the
Reformation, but Thomas Aquinas had understood their usefulness. He
noted that people need physical actions involving the senses, such as
prostration, vocal exclamation, and singing. He explained that these actions
are not made to attract God’s attention but to coax oneself into paying
attention to God (Thomas Aquinas 1926: 119). He put his finger on the
importance of physical action and sensory involvement to foster devotion.
Through the senses, a system of communication with God was
established. The senses were often considered tools to know God and teach
the faithful about unseen spiritual realities, yet it would be wrong to assume
that Christianity was always in favor of enticing and pleasing the senses.
Church fathers could not condemn any part of the body since this would
have amounted to criticizing God’s creation, but they could warn against
the fallen nature of human desires. The senses were the main gate through
which sinful desires took form. Through them, all the pleasures of the world
reached the soul and polluted it. Gregory Nazianzen (2000: 346) wrote:
 Let us not feast the eye, nor enchant the ear with music, nor enervate the nostrils with perfume,
nor prostitute the taste, nor indulge the touch, those roads that are so prone to evil and entrances
for sin … But we, the Object of whose adoration is the Word, if we must in some way have
luxury, let us seek it in word, and in the Divine Law …

The ascetic ideal amounted to strict control over the senses perceived as
gates to be kept closed from external influences that could bring to the soul
all the sights, sounds, perfumes, and sensuous touches of the world and
entice Christians to sin. The contrast between the insistence on the necessity
of strict control over the senses in the world and the richness of sensory
experiences offered to the faithful in churches is striking. The tightening of
the discourse on sensory control appears at the exact time the field of
sensory experiences expands in churches in the fourth century, which was
also the period of the development of monasticism.
For some persons, continual sensory deprivation was the only way to
fight demons and be close to God: they chose the monastic life. Monastic
retreat from society included a withdrawal from the Christian community as
well as an ascetic life. Fasting helped control the sexual drive and was a
necessary tool for a peaceful monastic life. Most monks and nuns exercised
strict control over touch: clothing of rough material or hair shirt, no
personal contact save the kiss of peace, ideally no contact at all with
persons of the opposite sex. John Climacus, in the Ladder of Divine Ascent
(1982: 182–3) explains “how with the eye alone, with a mere glance, by the
touch of a hand, through a song overheard, the soul is led to commit a
definite act of unchastity without any notion or evil thought.”
These dire warnings against the senses targeted monastics, but laypeople
had to be warned too. With the new pastoral care, which developed in the
West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, treatises of moral theology and
lists of vices and virtues were written to help clerics teach the laity that a
disorderly desire for food would lead them away from tasting spiritual
realities (Suarez-Nani 2002). A God-fearing person should not make use of
the pleasures of this world, as the future Pope Innocent III reminded readers
in his De contemptu mundi. Treatises such as Peter of Limoges’ Moral
Treatise on the Eye worked to create a Christian ethics of the senses
(Casagrande and Vecchio 2000; Newhauser 2010).
 By renouncing the pleasures of the senses, ascetics hoped to open their
inner senses to spiritual realities and enter into communion with God.
Some, however, pushed fasting too far and fed only on the Eucharist. The
phenomenon of holy anorexia, well attested in the late Middle Ages with
saints like Catherine of Sienna (d. 1380), was the extreme point of this
sensory deprivation (Bell 1985; Bynum 1987). Catherine, a tertiary of the
Dominican order, who was unable to feed herself, ate only the consecrated
host, and yet, she wrote: “When I cannot receive the Holy Sacrament, its
presence and seeing it are enough to fill me up” (Raymond of Capula
1996). She experienced life-altering visions, for example, her mystical
marriage with Jesus, who gave her a wedding ring invisible to all but
herself. Likewise, she received Christ’s stigmata in a vision, but these too
remained invisible. Sensory deprivation, especially Catherine’s control over
food and her visions, led her to be a powerful figure and opened to her an
unlikely career as an emissary to the pope. Sensory deprivation in the
Christian ascetic tradition allowed men and women who practiced it with a
full heart to gain the esteem of the Christian community. It was a path to
holiness, especially because it was believed that depriving the physical
senses helped to open the inner senses.
Mysticism, which can be understood as a search for a personal
experience of God’s presence, was an important feature of medieval
Christianity. The mystical experience usually took place inside the head or
the heart and could not be shared with others except with words and
comparisons with well-known physical experiences of the ordinary senses.
It was a somatic experience, but was understood as emanating from a
presence and not as the result of some somatic function. Hildegard of
Bingen insisted that her visions did not reach her through her eyes or ears,
but through her inner senses, and gave her an immediate understanding of
Scripture (Hildegard of Bingen 1978: 3–4). Bernard of Clairvaux said he
could feel the presence of Christ in his heart. His senses did not feel
anything, but he could measure the effect of Christ’s presence by a change
in his own mindset. In his sermons on the Song of Songs (serm. 74, 2.5),
Bernard notes that in the mystical experience, God did not come through
the eyes because he has no color, he did not come through the ears because
he is silent, nor though the nose because he does not mingle with the air, but
with the soul. This is a very different experience from the one a worshiper
has when seeing an image of Christ or hearing the words He said, or
touching Him with the hand or the tongue when taking communion.
In the sensorium, many mystics chose touch and taste to express their
feeling of God’s proximity. William of Saint-Thierry tasted the flavor and
softness of God in the Eucharist. The thirteenth-century poet Hadewijch of
Brabant used the sensory language of touch and taste to describe her
intimate union with God. In both cases, they report their love of God in
sensory terms, emphasizing the importance of the senses in religious
experience (Rudy 2002).
The doctrine of the spiritual senses enabled Christians to write about their
personal experience of God (Gavrilyuk and Coakley 2012). This inner
experience of God’s presence could be reached through ritual sensory
experiences, such as looking at the image of the Crucifix, seeing the Host,
or listening to music. It could also be reached though closing the physical
senses to the outside world, by an ascetic life deprived of sensory pleasures.
In monastic communities, rich enough to build lavish churches, the sensory
deprivation of monastic life was compensated by a wealth of positive
sensory experiences in the liturgy, such as chanting in order to promote
inner meditation or smelling incense. For lay people, similarly, the splendor
of religious buildings and ceremonies, liturgical practices and devotions,
opened innumerable ways to enjoy religion. The same could be said for
Islam and Judaism, where mystics also used sensory language to
communicate their enjoyment of God’s presence and where the faithful
could admire beautifully built shrines (Schimmel 1982; Tirosh-Samuelson
2010).
In all three religions, because the word of God had a central importance,
discussions took place on how to favor hearing over sight. In the Latin
world, there was a tension between adorning churches to create a very rich
sensory display and limiting this display to focus the attention of the
faithful on hearing. Cistercians felt that nothing should distract Christians
from listening to the word of God and from singing in response. As a result,
they rejected stained glass windows and sculptural adornment and favored
bare walls with excellent acoustics (Duby 1976; McGuire 2011).
The same tension existed between the multiplication of gestures of
devotion and prayers, especially around the cult of saints, and the aspiration
to concentrate on silent prayer and the inner senses, leading to mysticism.
Eventually, in the West, this tension was so strong that it created a rupture
which was expressed in the Reformation. The difference between ornate
medieval and later baroque churches, where numerous gestures of devotion
were opened to churchgoers, and the bare spaces of Calvinist churches,
centered only on hearing and singing, is a visible articulation of these
tensions (Finney 1999).1

Pontigny, France: interior of the Cistercian church

FIGURE 4.7:
(founded in 1114). Photograph: Béatrice Caseau.
 CHAPTER FIVE
_____________________________________

The Senses in Philosophy

and Science: Mechanics
of the Body or Activity
of the Soul?
PEKKA KÄRKKÄINEN

The Western worldview inherited two opposite—even conflicting—views

of sense perception from ancient philosophy. One of them considered the
human mind as part of the general causality of nature, being a passive
recipient of sensory impressions which trigger instinctual responses that
move us through their irresistible force to various kinds of animal behavior.
Such a view was popular among Aristotelians and the medical tradition,
although not exclusively (Knuuttila 2008: 2–6, 17). The other view
considered the human mind to be an active agent, not only an internal
forum for thinking, remembering, etc., but also a principal inquirer into the
external world through the use of the sense organs as its means of inquiry—
along with matter outside the body that served as a medium (e.g. air, water).
Many Stoics and Neoplatonists such as Plotinus were inclined to this view
(Emilsson 2008: 23–4; Løkke 2008: 36). These two contrasting descriptions
of sensing by human beings provided for dynamic discussions on sense
perception by the learned elite of the Middle Ages, who endeavored in
many ways to harmonize the varied opinions of the ancient schools of
philosophy, medicine, and other areas of knowledge. Nevertheless, the
tension between these views continued, and manifested itself occasionally
in cases like Peter John Olivi’s (d. 1298) harsh criticism of the Perpectivist
theory (Denery 2005: 121–2).
Sense perception was already a standard topic of theoretical discussions
in ancient psychology. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, psychology was
not an independent branch of science but a part of natural philosophy which
discussed the nature of living beings. These psychological discussions
flourished in all major philosophical schools of antiquity. The discussions
among Platonist and Aristotelian traditions, partly mediated through the
Galenic medical tradition, were particularly influential in the Middle Ages
(Knuuttila 2008: 8). The Aristotelian tradition developed out of the single
most influential work of ancient psychology, Aristotle’s On the Soul, with
its theory of sense perception. Aristotle conceived of sense perception in the
framework of a threefold distinction between plant, animal, and intellectual
souls. Plant soul was an entity responsible for the most basic functions of
any living being, such as reproduction and metabolism. Whereas plant soul
was common to all living organisms, including plants, animal soul was
found only in animals and humans. Intellectual soul, which was capable of
abstract reasoning, was proper to humans alone. Sense perception was
counted as one of the animal soul’s functions. Aristotle’s On the Soul
became a classic in the field and was influential until the emergence of
modern empirical psychology (Fugali 2009).
The following chapter provides a glimpse of the varied theoretical
discussions of sense perception in medieval natural philosophical, medical,
theological, and other academic literature. The focus is on the topics which
interested medieval intellectuals themselves. These include (a) the nature of
sense perception, including its relationship to other mental phenomena such
as reasoning; (b) the similarities and differences between various external
senses; (c) rudimentary scientific theorizing and experimenting vis-à-vis the
issues connected to sense perception; and (d) the nature of the sensing
subject as a passive or active agent and the questions concerning the impact
of the sensing subject on the process of perception, including the intentional
aspects of sense perception.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL
BASIS OF SENSE PERCEPTION
Being a phenomenon common to animals and humans alike, sense
perception was associated with a specific element in the psychological
constitution of human beings and animals by both Plato and Aristotle. This
sensory component was intimately connected to the body’s sense organs,
but—in human beings—was distinguished from the higher cognitive
faculties. Aristotle called it “the sensory soul,” and described its functions
in the second book of De anima (On the Soul). In ancient philosophy the
distinction between various cognitive powers was usually drawn from their
distinct objects. Sense perception was about perceiving the perceptible
qualities of material objects, like colors, whereas reason, it was thought,
apprehended the intelligible qualities of things such as a person’s humanity
or other essential features. The focus was on the qualities of the objects
rather than the relationship between the faculties of the soul. A more
specifically psychological approach was developed in Arabic philosophy.
The Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037)
systematized Aristotle’s terminology by determining psychological
phenomena that were the actualizations of hierarchically ordered subpowers
of the vegetative, sensory, and rational faculties. As in ancient philosophy,
each faculty had its specific objects, but the relationships between the
faculties and their physiological basis in the respective bodily organs were
defined with more complexity in Avicenna’s writings in comparison to the
preceding Aristotelian tradition (Kaukua 2007: 25; Knuuttila 2008: 2–4).
According to Avicenna, sense perception takes place as follows:
perception begins from external objects, whose perceptible qualities
influence the sense organs through mediating substances such as air or
water. Avicenna strongly opposed the extramissionist theory, which in the
case of sight posited a visual ray stretching out from the eye all the way to
the visual object. Along with Alhacen’s (Ibn al-Haytham, d. 1040) views,
Avicenna’s rejection contributed to the unpopularity of the extramissionist
theories in Aristotelianism. Furthermore, from the eye or other sense organs
a chain of effects was seen as continuing through the nervous system to
what was referred to as “the common sense,” where sense data is gathered.
The rest of the processing of the sense data is the task of the internal senses,
and not a part of actual sense perception. As the terminus of the process of
external perception, the common sense was considered to be the seat of the
external perceptive faculty. Avicenna saw the cognitive process as a series
of abstractive acts, where the first stage takes place when the senses abstract
the sensory form from the material conditions of the perceived object
(Hasse 2000: 119–26; Kaukua 2007: 30–1).
Avicenna provided a detailed theory of cognitive faculties connected to
sense perception. First of all, it included five Aristotelian faculties of sense
perception: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch (Avicenna 1952: 26–7;
1972: 83–5). Avicenna called these faculties “external senses,”
distinguishing them from the five internal ones, which had cognitive
functions falling between the categories of pure sense perception and higher
cognitive processes: (a) the common sense, (b) the imaginative or formative
faculty, (c) compositive imagination (in animals) or the cogitative faculty
(in humans), (d) estimation, and (e) memory (Avicenna 1972: 87–90;
Kaukua 2007: 26–30).
Consideration of cognitive phenomena within the framework of the
senses implied that they occurred in close connection with the bodily
constitution of animals. Avicenna associated all of the internal senses with
respective organs in the brain and, following the Galenist medical tradition,
could therefore explain why brain injuries caused amnesia or other
cognitive impairments. The distinction between the five internal senses
resulted from certain theoretical principles. Avicenna distinguished first
between two kinds of data which the external senses convey. At first, one
perceives different material qualities, such as colors, sounds, smells, etc.
These are generally called “forms.” Second, one perceives through the
senses certain qualities behind the immediately perceived qualities, which
even animals are capable of perceiving and which thus belong to the realm
of sense perception. Avicenna called these qualities “intentions” (Arab.
mana, Lat. intentio), and he presents a classic example of the estimative
faculty’s function: “This is the power by which a sheep judges that the wolf
is to be avoided and the lamb is to be loved” (Avicenna 1972: 89). The
fivefold number resulted from associating distinct faculties with distinct
objects. Two faculties were associated with forms: the common sense for
receiving the forms and the imaginative/formative faculty for their
retention. And two faculties were associated with intentions: the estimative
for receiving the intentions and memory for the retention of them. In
addition to these passive faculties, the fifth—the compositive imagination
or cogitative faculty—was associated with the active manipulation of both
forms and intentions (Kaukua 2007: 28–9).
The most important of the internal senses regarding sense perception was
the common sense, which acted as a bridge between the external and
internal senses. The phenomenon of dreaming was explained in medieval
Aristotelianism as a condition of the common sense, where the external
sense organs ceased to provide sense data and consequently the images of
previous perceptions, stored in the internal senses of memory and
imagination, filled the common sense, or when the organs of the external
senses caused illusions of actual perceptions (Averroës 1949: 98–9; on
some earlier theories of sleep and dreams, see Ricklin 1998). The difference
between dreaming and imagination was that in dreams imagined objects
appear as objects of sense perception and not as objects of ordinary
daydreaming. According to Albert the Great (d. 1280), a German
Dominican theologian and perhaps the most influential natural philosopher
of the Middle Ages, this applied also to the phenomenon of lucid dreaming,
where a person is aware of the illusory nature of dreams. This awareness
was a result of reasoning rather than the intuitive discernment of dreams as
imaginations (Albert the Great 1896: 412).
 FIGURE 5.1:Gentile da Fabriano (1370–1427), The Adoration
of the Magi, detail: Joseph sleeping. Florence, The Uffizi
Gallery. Source: Wikimedia,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gentile_da_Fabrian
o_030.jpg.

Following the introduction of Aristotelianism to the recently established

universities in the twelfth century, the Avicennian theory of the distinction
between the external and internal senses provided Latin philosophy with a
systematic explanation of the cognitive processes involved in sense
perception. A specific strength of Avicenna’s psychology among the
Aristotelian philosophers was his ability to combine the Galenist medical
and physiological tradition with Aristotelian natural philosophy. In fact,
Avicenna’s psychological ideas influenced Western authors not only
through his work On the Soul, but also through his Canon of Medicine,
which was to become the basic textbook of Western medicine for centuries
(Hasse 2000: 2–3, 225–6).
Avicenna’s theory of the internal senses was already subjected to
criticism in Arabic Aristotelianism. Averroës (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198) discarded
the faculty of estimation, and combined imaginative power and compositive
imagination into one faculty. Even if Avicenna’s theory was largely
followed in Latin philosophy, writers modified it here, too, in several ways,
partly under the influence of Averroës’s criticism. For example, the faculty
of estimation was envisioned in various ways. Albert the Great considered it
to be a faculty corresponding to practical intellect on the level of the animal
soul. As practical intellect in the intellectual soul, estimation provides the
animal soul with a judgment of sensory attractiveness or repulsiveness,
which acts as a basis for movement like fleeing in the case of sheep seeing a
wolf. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) saw the faculty of estimation as
unnecessary in human psychology, but retained it for animals as a faculty of
instinctual reactions to certain kinds of perceptions (Black 2000; see also
Hasse 2000: 139–40 on how Avicenna saw the connection between the
faculties of perception, emotions, and movement).
The famous Scottish theologian John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) later
questioned the Avicennian notion of intentions as a specific type of sensory
object with his own version of the sheep/wolf example featuring a
treacherous sheep in wolf’s clothing:

For if a sheep were changed by a miracle to be like a wolf in all its perceptible qualities, such as
color, figure, voice, etc., while retaining its nature and its natural affection towards the lamb, the
lamb would flee from this changed sheep in the same way as it flees from a wolf. However, the
sheep would still have no harmful intention, but only an agreeable one.
Duns Scotus 1954: 43

According to Scotus it is thus impossible that any intentions are transmitted

from the object of perception to the perceiver together with sensory forms,
but rather the phenomenon of perceiving intentions is based on the sensory
forms.
As for the relationship between sense perception and reason, at least
since the introduction of Aristotelianism in medieval philosophy,
philosophers were largely committed to the idea that intellectual operations
are not possible without the presence of mental images ultimately derived
from sense perception. This Aristotelian idea (see, for example, Aristotle,
De anima III.8. 432a8–14) was classically formulated by Aquinas as the
theory of “turning to phantasms” (conversio ad phantasmata). Phantasms
were considered to be more than actual perceptions, since they could also
be memories of past perceptions or combinations of memories. Medieval
Aristotelians did not consider the soul to be a creative entity which could
produce imaginations from nothing, but rather that all imagined things were
somehow combinations of imaginations created by previous perceptions.
Imagination was seen as a process taking place in an organ situated in the
brain. Rational thinking, on the contrary, was an act of the intellectual soul
which was basically distinct from the body. The theory of “turning to
phantasms” could explain why lesions on the brain could hinder rational
thinking while they did not affect the intellectual soul itself (Thomas
Aquinas, Summa theologiae I.84.7).
Even Aquinas thought that turning to phantasms was something
conditioned by the present human condition and its bodily nature. In
heaven, saints do not need to have phantasms; instead, their intellect grasps
all things in a direct vision of intellectual realities. Towards the end of the
Middle Ages some thinkers questioned the traditional Aristotelian theory.
Heymeric van de Velde (d. 1460), who identified himself as an Albertist (a
follower of Albert the Great, the teacher of Aquinas), argued that human
beings are capable of understanding without phantasms even in this life and
without the aid of God’s supernatural grace. Heymeric based his view on
the tradition of Albert the Great and Ulrich of Strassbourg (d. 1277), but
this Albertist view remained marginal in late medieval discourse (Hoenen
1993, 1995).
For medieval academics, sense perception was unquestionably also a
bodily process. However, they were unanimous about the physical location
of the common sense in which external sense perception was considered to
be ultimately consummated. The medical tradition following Galen seemed
to posit it in the brain, as with other similar faculties the Avicennian
tradition later included in the internal senses. Some favored locating sense
perception in the heart as Aristotle seemed to have done, but many
philosophers followed Avicenna and Averroës, who wished to harmonize
Galenist brain-centered and Aristotelian heart-centered views. The presence
of most sense organs in the head made the brain a plausible location for the
center of sensing, and integrating the heart into the physiological process of
perception made authors like the Parisian philosopher John Buridan assume
that a connecting nerve between the brain and the heart mediated the sense
data between the two organs (Knuuttila 2008: 11–13).

OPTICS AND THE SCIENCE OF SENSE

PERCEPTION
In medieval philosophy, sight was considered to be the preeminent sense. In
discussing sense perception in general, examples were usually taken from
the domain of sight. The entities which communicated sense data were
generally referred to in pictorial terms as species or forma (“appearance” or
“form”). There was even a branch of knowledge devoted to the study of
sight, namely optics. Sight was not only considered the generic form of
perception, it was often explicitly ranked above the other senses.
The superiority of sight was supported by theoretical considerations. One
argument was based on the idea of the superiority of immaterial versus
material reality. Aquinas presented this argument in discussing Averroës’s
considerations of the differences between the senses (Thomas Aquinas
1984: 152–3). Experience showed that touch, taste, smell, and even hearing
were profoundly determined by material conditions—for example, odors
being carried by the winds, which even inhibit hearing, but not sight. Light
was known to move in the air instantaneously from one place to another
while sounds and smells did not (although there were discussions as to
whether light moved in one instant of time or only extremely fast; see
Lindberg 1978a).
Aquinas distinguished two types of alterations involved in sense
perception, both in the external object and in the sense organ. He called one
of them “natural,” and this included changes which are more or less
material, like the ones taking place when sensing sounds, odors, and
flavors. The other type of change he called “spiritual,” typically exemplified
in light, colors, and seeing things. Then Aquinas ranked the senses
according to the spirituality of the change involved in the process.
Consequently, sight appears as the noblest of the senses, since no natural
change is involved either in the colors and luminosity of the object seen or
in the organ of sight, since the eye does not change color when a colored
thing is seen. As for hearing, sound requires a movement of the air, which
he classified among the natural changes, and touch involves most clearly
natural changes in the object sensed and even in the sense organ. For
example, sensing heat cannot occur without the body of the sensing subject
becoming warm also. In Aquinas, the essential superiority of sight was
closely connected to the idea of the principality of sight in aesthetic
experience (Campbell 1996: 170–1).
However, the superiority of sight was not taken for granted, and
philosophers such as Aquinas’s teacher Albert the Great considered
different options for ranking the senses. Following Aristotle, Albert
remarked that in terms of the self-preservation of an animal, touch seemed
to be the most important of the senses. Without it an animal would be
incapable of living at all, and in this respect a functional sense of touch is
necessary for the existence of the other senses. Nevertheless, Albert
supported the superiority of sight with another argument. If the order of the
senses is considered from the viewpoint of what the purpose of sense
perception is, then the quality of the cognition should be taken as the
criterion. With respect to cognition, sight exceeds all other senses in range
and accuracy of detail, since it can perceive both terrestrial and celestial
objects (Albert the Great 1896: 282, 168; Steneck 1980: 269). Aquinas
agreed with Albert on the basic affirmation of the superiority of sight, but
by positing the spirituality of change as the criterion he did not adopt
Albert’s reasoning that the complexity of cognition played an important role
(Campbell 1996: 171).
A major development in the study of sight, which was called perspectiva
or optics, took place in medieval Arab philosophy. Alhacen explained how
rays of light form a picture in the eye by point-to-point correspondence with
the surface of the thing seen. The major difference with our modern view
was in Alhacen’s understanding of the image formed in the eye, which was
considered the basis for the visual data conveyed by the optic nerve. Instead
of a transposed image on the retina, medieval optics could for example
maintain that the image was formed on the surface of the crystalline humor
(i.e., the lens; see Bacon, Perspectiva I.2.3). However, the main
achievement of medieval optics following Alhacen was that it could explain
the physical contact between the perceiver and the object perceived by rays
of light reaching from the object (perhaps refracted through mirrors) to the
eye of the perceiver (Lindberg 1978b: 346).
This optical tradition also explained various exceptional cases in which
seeing does not occur in an ideal manner, resulting in illusory perceptions
conveying unreliable information about the external world. Alhacen listed
eight conditions for veridical vision: an appropriate distance between the
object and the eye, the direct location of the object before the eye, light, the
sufficient size of the visible object, the transparency of the medium between
the eye and the object, the density of the visible object, a sufficient amount
of time, and a healthy eye (Alhacen, De aspectibus I.7.36–42). Without
these preconditions, sight is either inhibited or at least distorted, as is the
case in looking at the sun and the moon, which seem to be smaller than they
actually are because of their distance. Alhacen’s preconditions marked a
beginning of a tradition; after him, for example, Roger Bacon (Perspectiva
I.8.1–9.4; II.2.1–4) listed nine conditions, while Peter of Limoges (Moral
Treatise on the Eye 11, trans. Newhauser, p. 114; see Newhauser 2010)
listed seven.
Despite the observed differences between the senses, Arab Aristotelian
philosophers had already developed a unified model of the physical process
of sense perception. The key element was the resemblance of the original
perceptible quality, which mediates between the perceptible object and the
faculty of perception. In the optics of Alhacen and the natural philosophy of
Averroës, these resemblances were described as “forms” (Arab. Mana; Lat.
forma, species, intentio) of the individual perceptibilities. They were
described as qualities of the mediating substance, like air or water, and were
said to multiply themselves in direct lines, in the case of visible qualities,
producing rectilinear rays which were the focus of the study of optics. After
reaching the eye, the rays were thought to create an image of the thing seen
in the eye (in the crystalline lens and in the glacial humor), which was
isomorphic to the thing seen (Spruit 1994: 82–4, 91). The forms were not
thought to travel in the air, but were thought to be changes in the air which
multiplied themselves along straight lines from the thing seen (see for
example Bacon 1996: 140). For the dominant theory of sensory forms, the
later caricature of images traveling through air is therefore far from
appropriate. Furthermore, as a similar theory was applied to auditory and
other types of sensory data, the sources never indicated that sensory forms
of sounds would have been thought to be in some sort of pictorial form.
Ultimately, it was believed that the forms received in the organs of
perception produced similar forms in the sensory nerves and in the organs
of the internal senses, in every case according to the specific mode of being
in the various organs.
In his Treatise on the Soul (Tractatus de anima), Peter of Ailly (d. 1420)
summarizes earlier views about sensory forms. He systematically discusses
their nature, dividing the discussion into three subtopics: sensory forms in
the medium (e.g., air, water), in the external senses, and in the internal
senses. In addition to the main theory (opinio communis) of Thomas
Aquinas and Giles of Rome (d. 1316), which affirmed the existence of
forms in all three instances, Peter also takes seriously William of Ockham’s
(d. 1347) theory, which rejected the existence of sensory forms altogether
(Pluta 1987: 71–2). Peter’s treatise presents an illustrative example of a
particular type of late medieval academic writing which does not attempt to
be an author’s original contribution to the scientific discussion at the time,
but in a concise way helps the student to understand the different opinions
and the reasons for them. Another type of exposition of the same themes
will be shown below: John Buridan (d. c. 1358), one of Peter’s predecessors
at the University of Paris, who engaged in a rudimentary form of original
scientific theorizing under the cloak of a commentary on Aristotle’s text.

BURIDAN’S UNIFIED THEORY OF SENSORY

FORMS
The discussion of the nature of forms in the mediating substance was
centered around their materiality vs. immateriality. Because of general
everyday experience, the forms of sensible qualities in the medium were
generally considered to be of an immaterial or at least very fine material
nature, with light being by nature the most immaterial. Tastes and smells
were already thought by Aristotle to be propagated by material particles,
and the classic definition of sound as a vibration of the air was also
inherited from ancient philosophy (Pasnau 1999: 310). In De musica, which
remained a fundamental text for the teaching of music theory throughout
the Middle Ages, Boethius (d. c. 526) had even recognized the connection
between pitch and the frequency of vibration in the air (Boethius, De
musica I.3; for an English translation, see Boethius 1967: 50).
In fourteenth-century Paris the philosopher John Buridan made a
remarkable effort to construct a view according to which all the senses rely
on the mediation of immaterial forms, and he attempted to explain various
sensory experiences by the nature of the interaction between the forms and
the mediating material substances. Buridan’s effort was at one and the same
time highly original and a good example of dealing with standard questions
concerning sense perception in late medieval Aristotelian natural
philosophy. Buridan’s strong advocation of sensory forms or species theory,
as it is also called, may be related to the fact that William of Ockham had at
the same time, contrary to common opinion, questioned the need of positing
such entities as forms in the medium in order to explain sense perception,
although Buridan does not refer to Ockham in his writing (for an edition,
translation, and analysis of the text, see Buridan 1984; Sobol 2001).
Buridan’s view was based on three claims concerning the forms of
sensible qualities in the mediating substance: (a) the forms are not
multiplied instantaneously, but rather at a finite speed, (b) the forms remain
in the medium for some time, and (c) the coarseness of the mediating matter
slows down the multiplication and causes reflection, which distorts the
multiplication of the forms along the rectilinear rays (Burdian 1984: lxvii,
lxix). The first two claims form the answer to the main question, which
Buridan endeavored to discuss in question 18 of his Questions concerning
the second book of Aristotle’s On the Soul. Together with the third claim,
Buridan thought he could explain various phenomena concerning light,
sounds, smells, and tangible qualities such as heat, calling the descriptions
of phenomena “experiences” (Buridan 1984: 262, 299, 308).
 Buridan’s discussion was not based on the most obvious empirical
observations, which in this case led to unusual conclusions. Indeed, much
of his discussion was intended to explain why experience seemed to
contradict his claims. However, this led to an interesting consideration of
some less frequent theoretical options. In arguing for the first claim, for
example, Buridan had to face the obvious fact that light seems to proceed
extremely fast, which had even led the great authority Aristotle to conclude
that light travels at an infinite speed. The claim that all forms are multiplied
in a medium at a finite speed seemed not to apply to light (Buridan 1984:
250).
Buridan’s argument for the first claim was based on the idea that forms of
light necessarily remain in the medium for a short period of time (see claim
(b)). He wanted to substantiate the claim mainly by empirical observations
and the consequences drawn from them. The phenomenon of a minor
reflection in the air, visible during a lunar eclipse because the moon was not
completely devoid of the sun’s light, was for Buridan a sign of the
grossness of even such a fine medium as air, which resists light and
illuminates the air itself (claim (c)). An important aspect here was that
according to Buridan air did not resist light as a foreign material substance
like a falling projectile, but rather as a process of multiplication of forms, in
which light was inhered in the very substance of air. Due to the resistance
causing the phenomenon of reflection, Buridan concluded that in the
presence of such resistance the speed of light must be finite (Sobol 2001:
190).
Therefore, in his endeavor to unify the theory of the mediation of
sensible qualities, Buridan ended up seeing forms of light more like sounds
and other qualities, and therefore interestingly advocated the finiteness of
the speed of light even if this was not possible to measure in his time. On
the problem of whether the sun illuminates the opposite end of the horizon
at the same instant of time as it rises—the example given by Aristotle—
Buridan comments that to resolve the case one should be at both places at
the same time. Without the possibility to arrange such an experiment,
Buridan refers to the phenomenon of the burning stick, whose light seems
to remain in the air after the stick has been moved to another place. Buridan
also refers more generally to the phenomenon of after-images in arguing for
the idea that the visual forms remain for some time in the material
substances, which in the case of after-images is in the eye (Sobol 2001:
190–1).

FIGURE 5.2:Giorgione ([Giorgio da Castelfranco], 1477–

1510), from frescoes on the artes liberales and artes
mechanicae (c. 1500–10), detail: lunar and solar eclipses.
Venice, Casa Pellizzari. Source: Wikimedia,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giorgione_034.jpg.

A more theoretical argument for the second claim appears in Buridan’s

discussion of the forms of sound. To be able to multiply themselves, the
forms must, according to Buridan, remain in the medium at least for a
moment, since it is reasonable to assume that their generation requires at
least a small amount of time. Generally speaking, Buridan’s theory seemed
to fit best the sense of sound. The speed of sound was known to be finite,
and sounds proceed mainly in a rectilinear manner, but they are also
reflected in a way the theory assumes, for example around corners, unlike
rays of light.
However, concerning sounds and odors Buridan had to face the
materialistic interpretation which defined sound as a mere percussion of the
air, propagating itself in the form of waves and so making any talk about
immaterial forms redundant. A crucial feature of the sensible forms in the
medium was that they were not like ordinary perceptible qualities, since
they were not perceived themselves when they were in the medium, but
only mediated between the original objects of perception and the organs of
sense. Therefore, air does not turn red when a red object is seen. The same
is not obvious in the case of sounds and odors. Buridan’s answer—however
convincing it was—to the materialistic view was again based on experience.
According to him, it would be unlikely that sounds or odors would spread
as far as they actually do if they were only percussions of the air in the case
of sounds or evaporations of odorous particles in the case of odors. Buridan
explicitly rejects a proposed theory of sound waves, which would have
nicely explained the relative slowness of sounds and the phenomenon of
echo. One of his examples against the theory of sound waves was that if
people are singing loudly in a house, one cannot trace any movement, even
in the thinnest of curtains covering the windows or doors, which should
happen if sound were transmitted through waves. Neither can sounds move
a candle flame to any noticeable degree. Similarly, Buridan does not think
that the phenomena connected to the speed of sound can be explained if
sound were only transmitted as movement, since sounds travel much faster
than the air when one blows it (Burdian 1984: 468–70; Sobol 2001: 191).
Lastly, Buridan’s discussion of the most physical of the senses, touch,
focused on the immaterial nature of the mediating sensible forms. Here it is
interesting that he highlights the nature of these forms as radiation similar
to light. Again, Buridan takes an example or “experience” as the basis for
his argument. A person sitting in front of a fireplace feels the heat of the fire
on his or her skin. Nevertheless, the air between the person is not heated as
much as the skin. Therefore, the heat of the fire must be transmitted by
radiation which is not perceptible until it passes the mediating substance
and reaches the body which is heated because the heat is reflected from it
(Sobol 2001: 192). From our modern viewpoint, Buridan’s example
illustrates rather conveniently the similarity between light and thermal
radiation, making the inclusion of sounds and odors in the same category
even more awkward. Peter Sobol comments here on the limitations of
Buridan’s use of examples. Buridan does not mention the example of the
hot bath which he refers to in another context as a case in which the feeling
of warmth diminishes when over time the body becomes warm. However, it
is not evident whether this would be a problem for Buridan’s use of the
fireplace example, since it does not contradict the fact that even after the
possible waning of the initial perception of heat, the difference between the
relative perceptions of warmth in the air and in one’s body remains. The
same applies to Sobol’s comment on the possible questions which the
comparison between rays of light and heat would raise. The idea of a
reflection of heat, imperceptible in normal conditions, would not be
problematic in the example of the fireplace, since the main example of
light’s reflection is taken from the astronomical event of the sun’s eclipse
(Buridan 1984: lxxii–xxiii).
Buridan’s argumentation for his unified theory of the forms of sensible
qualities in the medium provides an interesting instance of the use of
experiential examples when discussing the core questions of sense
perception in late medieval natural philosophy. Long before the dawn of
modern experimental science, Buridan intensified the ancient habit of
making observations part of his theorizing, particularly where Aristotle’s
treatment of the matter seemed inadequate, and hence ended up using old
concepts in a new way that was innovative but not revolutionary (Sobol
2001: 193).

EXPLAINING THE PERCEPTION OF DEPTH

AND COLOR
Buridan’s contemporaries in Paris also provide us with some of the rare
comments on the artistic illusion of depth and its explanation according to
the science of their time. Peter Marshall has analyzed texts by Nicole
Oresme (1320–82) and his unknown predecessor which refer to the artistic
technique of creating the illusion of relief by painting more distant parts of
an object with darker colors and thus creating illusions of concavity or
convexity (Marshall 1981: 171–2).
These two Parisian philosophers were contemporaries of Giotto, but there
seems to be no obvious link between their natural philosophical remarks
and the nascent art of the Renaissance. The technique of creating relief in
painting described by the Parisians had been in use for centuries in
medieval art and was described in artists’ handbooks as shading used
especially in creating the architectural backgrounds of paintings (Marshall
1981: 175).
Oresme and his anonymous predecessor explained the effect of this
technique by using the conceptual tools of the medieval tradition of optics
(Marshall 1981: 172). In explaining sight, the representation of the external
objects formed by rays of light in the middle of the eye played a central
role. The representation consisted of sensory forms which corresponded to
the colors of the visible objects. Together, the individual forms constituted
an image which was the basis of visual perception as an act of the soul
(Marshall 1981: 171).
 FIGURE 5.3: Jean Pucelles (and his workshop), Belleville-
Breviary (1323–6), showing David and Saul. Paris,
Bibliothèque nationale de France MS 10484. Source:
Wikimedia,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_(und_Werksta
tt)_Pucelles_001.jpg.

The illusion of depth was due to differing intensities of the forms created
by colors: lighter colors create more intense forms, whereas darker colors,
such as black, create less intense ones. This intensity of forms
corresponding to the value of colors is retained in the image, which the
perceiver, through the mediation of similar images or representations of the
external world in the visual nerves and brain, judges as a figure of the
object in the external world, having a concave or convex surface instead of
the plain one of a painting (Marshall 1981: 171–2).
The “judgment,” i.e. the actual perception of depth, takes place according
to Oresme in the sense of vision itself before any rational or semi-rational
mental processes take place, according to Aristotelian-Avicennian
psychology, in the faculties of the internal senses and in the rational soul.
Oresme notes that the perception of a figure, which includes the perception
of depth, occurs in the sense of touch as well. However, he had no
theoretical tools to explain the arrangement of parts in the forms created by
touch; likewise, he could not explain further how the sense of hearing can
perceive distances, even though he admitted that it does. In his elaboration
of the theory of perception in the field of visuality, Oresme appears as a
typical example of medieval science (Oresme 1980: 68–9).
In medieval natural philosophy the phenomenon of colors had been
studied since the thirteenth century by observing rainbows, but also by
experiments with prisms. Many philosophers such as Roger Bacon (d.
1292), John Pecham (d. 1292), and Albert the Great tried to find a
connection between these two phenomena that produce a rather similar kind
of spectrum. The Polish natural philosopher Witelo gave the most
comprehensive account of the experiments done with hexagonal prisms
(triangular prisms were not in use in the Middle Ages) and stated most
clearly the connection between the angles of refraction and the individual
spectral colors. The first mature theory of the origin of the rainbow was put
forward by Dietrich of Freiberg (d. c. 1327), who explained the emergence
of spectral colors by a double refraction of the rays of light in raindrops.
Dietrich developed his theory with the help of Witelo’s and his own
observations of hexagonal prisms (Gage 2000: 122–3).

SENSING SUBJECT
The problem of how to combine the view of perception as an activity of the
perceiving subject with the view of perception as a physical process of
causation produced a wide theoretical discussion in medieval philosophy on
the active and passive aspects of perception. In ancient philosophy, Aristotle
had viewed perception as a passive phenomenon resulting from a chain of
activations of diverse passive capabilities to perceive, where the ultimate
activator was the object of perception outside the perceiver. However,
Augustine and the Neoplatonist tradition had viewed perception primarily
as an activity of the perceiving soul, where active aspects, such as directing
one’s attention, played a considerable role. Furthermore, the Neoplatonist
tradition was particularly hostile to the idea that lower levels of being, such
as material or physical processes, could have a causal effect on higher
entities like souls (Knuuttila 2008: 4–6, 9).
The activity of the sensing subject was affirmed with respect to different
aspects. Even those philosophers who followed Aristotle in considering
perceptive power to be passive could admit that the act of perception might
be regarded as a discrimination of forms and therefore in some sense an
active process (Knuuttila 2008: 10; Spruit 2008: 214–15). In contrast,
Robert Kilwardby (d. 1279) developed a synthesis of Augustinian and
Aristotelian theories on the basis of the Augustinian viewpoint. According
to him, perception is an active process, at least in human beings, where the
intellectual soul or “spirit” perceives an image of the external perceptible
quality, which the soul itself actively forms in itself. Kilwardby does not
deny the physiological process where sense organs and the nervous system
are involved in receiving impressions from the external world, but
according to him the bodily processes only take place simultaneously with
the process of perception occurring in the human soul. Thus, the
phenomenon of perception can be explained without the idea that the bodily
organs might influence the intellectual soul, which is by nature a spiritual
entity unaffected by matter (Silva and Toivanen 2010: 254–7).
A similar view is later presented by Peter John Olivi, in which the
intellectual soul’s act of attention again plays a central role in perception.
Unlike Kilwardby, Olivi incorporates a rejection of the standard theory of
sensory forms, extending the idea of the soul’s active nature to exclude even
the passive nature of the physiological processes involved in perception.
Based on the Augustinian ideas of the ontological superiority of the soul to
matter, and the activity of the soul in perception, Olivi criticizes even
Augustine’s own theory of perception, which also considers perception
partly as the passive reception of certain external stimuli. Olivi argued that
no corporeal entity, such as sensory form, can produce a simple, spiritual,
and vivid act of perception which would correspond to the objects
perceived; only the soul is capable of producing such an act. Olivi also
questioned the power of corporeal intermediaries to transmit reliable
knowledge of the external world if they are merely representations of the
objects perceived. On the positive side, Olivi argued for the necessity of
attention in producing an act of perception. Without demanding the
attention of the soul it would be reasonable to attribute cognitive acts such
as perception even to inanimate objects, which appears in Olivi’s context as
an implausible idea. After also rejecting the ancient theories of the
extramission of corporeal rays of light in vision, Olivi formulated his own
position. He ended up defending a theory based on the active nature of the
soul, which constantly directs its attention towards various objects in the
body and in the external world. According to Olivi, the soul must be
capable of reaching out to its objects without the help of any particular
material causality, merely by its own powers. The capability to perceive is
based on the soul’s intentionality or directedness in Olivi’s extreme version
of the active view of perception (Silva and Toivanen 2010: 261, 267–9,
274).
In addition to the train of thought presented by Kilwardby and Olivi,
there was also another discussion about the active features of perception,
one more committed to the Aristotelian passive view. It was centered
around the concept of the agent sense (sensus agens). Before the rise of
Aristotelianism in Western philosophy, Averroës had raised the question of
whether one should posit an active power that transforms quasi-corporeal
perceptible forms into non-corporeal activators of the sensory powers. This
was also intended to solve the problem of how one can avoid the idea of
corporeal beings having an influence at a higher non-corporeal level in the
process of perception. Averroës named the activator the “external mover,”
and drew parallels between it and a similar entity affecting the process of
concept formation called the “agent intellect” (Spruit 2008: 214).
While Averroës’s view of an external activator was subjected to criticism
by several Western Aristotelians, others developed it further. John of Jandun
combined Averroës’s remark with the idea that the soul itself activates its
sensory power in the presence of the sensory form in the sensory organ,
calling this power of the soul the “agent sense.” John Buridan and Nicole
Oresme presented similar views, which called the soul an agent sense
insofar as it self-activates its sensory powers. In describing this process
Oresme even used traditional Augustinian terminology, referring to the acts
of the soul as attention or intention. Despite the discussion about the
activity of the sensory faculty, Aristotelians like Jandun or Oresme
considered the process of perception essentially as a passive process
activated by perceptible qualities and mediated by physiological processes
in the sense organs and nervous system (Oresme 1985: 109–14; Spruit
2008: 214–15).
 FIGURE 5.4: Albrecht Altdorfer,
Sebastian altar in the abbey of
the Austin Canons, Sankt Florian (near Linz), Austria (c.
1509–16), left interior wing on the Passion, upper right
scene: the arrest of Jesus. Source: Wikimedia,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albrecht_Altdorfer
_026.png.

John Duns Scotus considered both the intentional act of the soul and the
species functioning as mediating causal agents to be necessary components
in the process of sense perception. For Scotus, the intentional act of the soul
makes the thing which is perceived the object of perception. Scotus also
posited the objects of perception, as well as all the objects of the cognitive
faculties, as a mode of being he called “objective” or “intentional” being,
which he distinguished from the real being of things. The objects of
cognition were present to the cognitive faculties according to their objective
being and not according to their real being (Duns Scotus 1997: 290).
Peter Auriol (d. 1322) applied Scotus’ distinction in the explanation of
misperceptions and illusions. According to Auriol, a burning stick moving
in the air creates a circle which does not have a real being at all, but neither
is the circle located in the soul of the perceiver. The circle must exist in the
air, but its mode of being is not real: it exists only objectively. Also
according to Auriol, apart from such exceptional cases of misperception,
real and objective being normally overlap (Peter Auriol 1956: 696–7).
On the basis of the discussions of real and objective being, Nicholas of
Autrecourt (d. 1369) presented a theory in which he radically separated the
real subjective being of things and their objective being as objects of
perception. According to Autrecourt, two people do not perceive the same
whiteness of a single object since their perceptions are different and
consequently the objective being of the perceived whiteness is different,
even if the whiteness of the thing itself is the same. Autrecourt’s view had
certain skeptical undertones, although he held on to the unity of real being
as the basis of a perceived objective being (Nicholas of Autrecourt 1939:
262).
A special case in which the notion of a sensing subject was involved was
the problem of bodily self-perception through the sense of touch. The
discussion of the sense of touch in medieval Aristotelian natural philosophy
was dominated by attempts to define the unity of the sense, its specific
objects, and its sense organs. Aristotle (De anima II.11) had defined the
proper objects of touch as follows: wet and dry, hot and cold, and hard and
soft. Medieval Aristotelians did not usually elaborate further on the sense of
touch in their commentaries on De anima or other natural philosophical
treatises. Avicenna added rough and smooth as the fourth item to Aristotle’s
list and even raised the question of whether touch is one sense at all, but
rather a collection of four individual senses which share a common organ
(Avicenna 1972: 83–5).
The list above refers to qualities which are more or less external to the
body of the perceiver. However, medieval thinkers were aware of the fact
that one can perceive in a similar way several states of one’s own body.
During the late Middle Ages, this led Peter John Olivi to add examples of
such states to the traditional list of the objects of touch, including feverish
heat, indigestion, sense of fullness after eating, etc. By extending the range
of objects to one’s bodily states, Olivi was led to define the general object
of the sense of touch as a kind of report on the different states of one’s
body. The self-perception of the body could even include traditional
Aristotelian objects of touch, since they are perceived through a bodily
organ, which itself changes according to the wetness, hotness, or hardness it
perceives (Yrjönsuuri 2008: 106–9).

CONCLUSION
For all its limitations, medieval academic life was fully engaged in a search,
guided by reason and the intellectual traditions it had inherited, for
knowledge about the mysteries of nature. This chapter has tried to present a
glimpse of the period’s academic discussions concerning sense perception,
which had by the end of the Middle Ages gained a prominent position as a
major element of Aristotelian psychology. In turn, Aristotelian psychology
was one of the major components of natural philosophy, an obligatory part
of the curriculum for anyone aiming to be a master of arts in any of the
universities. The degree of influence that these academic discussions had on
medieval culture is hard to evaluate. Innumerable theologians, doctors,
lawyers, and other persons with academic training had spent a great amount
of time deliberating over these matters during their studies. It would seem
most unlikely that this would have had no effect on their later thinking.
Furthermore, only a small amount of medieval psychological literature has
been studied to date, and therefore the many connections between
psychology and other branches of knowledge are still waiting for
clarification. In the forms in which we find them, the medieval discussions
presented above show us both the genius of the age and its limitations in
finding answers to questions about a most familiar phenomenon, sense
perception, at a time when the sophisticated tools of modern science were
yet to be developed.
 CHAPTER SIX
_____________________________________

Medicine and the Senses:

Feeling the Pulse,
Smelling the Plague, and
Listening for the Cure
FAITH WALLIS

A sign of change in the quality of the body happens in four ways: either by sight as in jaundice,
morphew, a blackened tongue and the like; or by smell, such as fetid breath or sweat [that smells
like] a lobster or a he-goat or the like; or by taste—for example, salt, bitter or acidic; or by touch,
as in soft and hard. What comes out of the body signifies in two ways: either with or without
sound. With sound: as in burping from the mouth or rumbling of the guts or breaking wind from
the anus. What is without sound is unnatural in three ways: either in quantity, as in lientery; or in
quality, as in black urine; or in both, as in bloody diarrhea.
Wallis 2010: 154

This striking catalogue of sensations would have been familiar to almost

any Western European who could claim formal education in medicine after
the year 1100. It comes from the Isagoge (Introduction) of Joannitius
(Hunayn ibn Ishāq, 809–87), a digest of the principles of medicine set forth
in Galen’s Art of Medicine. Burps, bad breath, and blackened tongues were
signs within the conceptual framework that medieval doctors called the
“theory” of medicine—roughly, anatomy, physiology, and general
pathology—and the Isagoge was a concise map of that theory. Shortly after
it was translated into Latin, probably by Constantine the African (d. c.
1085–99), it took up what would become its familiar position as the first
item in the teaching anthology called the Articella.
Learning medicine through formal schooling based on theory was new in
twelfth-century Europe (Bylebyl 1990). Early medieval practitioners
possessed a library that was heavily weighted towards practical manuals of
therapeutics and pharmacy, and they developed this practical literature in
quite creative ways (MacKinney 1937; Wallis 1995). But there were no
medical schools to prescribe a canon of authoritative texts, and lay
professionals are hard to trace. Clergy and monks regarded provision of
practical medical advice and care as part of their vocation; but their
knowledge was acquired informally, and there was little incentive to study
theory.
By the end of the eleventh century, the market for theory was rapidly
expanding. Medicine’s knowledge base was enlarged by fresh translations
of Greek texts, and of Arab-Islamic works like the Isagoge that
systematized and expanded the Greek legacy. The new texts were also read
in new settings, as systematic, collective medical instruction began to be
offered in schools. Even after the schools metamorphosed into faculties of
medicine in the nascent universities, not all who called themselves
physicians were graduates by any means. Nonetheless, Western Europeans
were increasingly accepting of medicine’s academic ideal: a scientific
knowledge of the workings of the human body in health and sickness
acquired from the study of texts and logical analysis, on the basis of which
the practitioner would decide what the medical problem was, and how it
should be rectified.
The new medical learning transformed the role assigned to the senses as
signs. Early medieval doctors practiced the classic forms of sense-based
diagnosis: feeling the pulse, gazing at urine, and watching for tokens of
impending death in the facial features of the patient. But the texts that
conveyed these techniques rarely explained why urine of a certain hue
signified cold or heat, nor did they define or rationalize the rhythms of the
pulse (Wallis 2000). The new academic medicine, on the other hand, was an
art of how to think self-consciously about signs in relation to causes. This
art set the learned physician apart from other practitioners. Surgeons dealt
with fractures and wounds inflicted from without, and evident to all, but
doctors managed conditions like fevers that arose inside the body, out of
sight. Knowledge of this hidden world was obtained by coordinating sense
data with scientific doctrine to read the “signs of change in the quality of
the body.” The main type of change was disruption of the relationship
between the body’s four constituent humors or their elemental qualities:
blood (hot and wet), choler (hot and dry), phlegm (cold and wet), and black
bile or melancholy (cold and dry). Change was caused by environmental
contingencies like air or food, or behavioral factors like exercise. As all
these operated within a natural world governed by heat, cold, moisture and
dryness, any of which could trigger an imbalance of qualities in the body.
Imbalance caused humors to putrefy, emitting noxious vapors that perturbed
physiological function, blocking internal passages, or causing
inflammation. The result was fever, pain, or morbid swellings. Only when
the hidden cause was identified could it be removed or counteracted.
Imbalance could be corrected by allopathic drugs or diet, giving cold foods
for excess heat, for example. In more serious cases, putrefied humor would
be forcibly expelled through evacuative medicines or bloodletting.
But while the doctor’s theoretical education rested on what were deemed
scientific certainties, his practice started from the most insecure kind of
knowledge: inference from the senses. Galenic medicine was obliged to
make sense of the senses, and to explain how they worked to give reliable
knowledge on which sound practice could be based. The literature of the
senses in scholastic medicine thus focuses on three domains of inquiry. The
first is theoretical, and includes discussion of the anatomical and
physiological basis of sensation in the body, but also the epistemological
status of the senses in medical judgment. The second and third bridge
theory to practice: how does the practitioner apply his senses to work out
diagnosis and treatment? What role do the patient’s senses play?
A specifically medical theory of the senses, as distinct from a
philosophical theory, is difficult to pin down, because medical authorities
like Galen and Avicenna were philosophers as well as physicians, and many
of their readers aspired to be as well. Galen’s ideas about the senses arrived
in the West through the translations by Constantine the African of Arabic
medical encyclopedias, notably the Pantegni of ’Ali ibn ’al Abbas al Majūsi
(Haly Abbas in the West). The first or “theoretical” section of the Pantegni
discussed the anatomy of the sense organs (Book 3, Chs. 14–17), the
psychophysiology of sensation (4.10–16), and accidents to and diseases of
the sense organs (Constantine the African 1515: 6.12–16, 9.15–18). Another
important avenue was Constantine’s translations of a pair of works on
Universal Diets and Particular Diets by Isaac Judaeus (Ishā ibn Sulaymān
al-Isrâ’īī, fl. c. 855–955). Isaac’s classification and analysis of foods is
scaffolded by an analysis of taste and aroma that was closely studied and
adapted in twelfth-century treatises like the Summa de saporibus et
odoribus and the Salernitan Questions, a collection of problems in natural
history (Burnett 1991, 2002, 2011; Lawn 1979: 349–50).
At the same time, “Salernitan” physicians were promoting the medical
relevance of Aristotle’s scientific treatises (Birkenmajer [1930] 1970;
Jacquart 1988). Doctors interested in the senses gravitated to Aristotle’s On
the Soul, On Sense and Sensation, to his works on animal life, and to the
pseudo-Aristotelian Problems. These works became staples in the
philosophy curricula of the new universities, which prepared students who
went on to medical studies. The newly established medical faculties,
however, expanded their own curricula to include Avicenna’s Canon and an
array of new translations of the works of Galen, including many which
discussed the senses, notably The Usefulness of Parts (in a medieval
adaptation of the first nine books entitled De iuvamentis membrorum)
(García Ballester 1995, 1998; Siegel 1970). In consequence, the differences
between medical and philosophical viewpoints on the senses became more
evident. A key figure in this process was Avicenna. The Canon pointed out
not only that Aristotle and Galen diverged on the somatic locus of sensation
(heart or head), but that this divergence marked out the different epistemic
objects of medicine and philosophy. Aristotle’s cardiocentric theory was
technically correct, in Avicenna’s view. But what constitutes the ultimate
seat of sensation is irrelevant to treatment. Because doctors deal with
particular and contingent problems, theirs is a probabilistic science, content
with “sufficient propositions rather than necessary ones” (Avicenna 1522:
fols. 21v–22r). Scholastic doctors, however, declined to accept this implicit
demotion of medical knowledge. And physicians had the advantage of the
philosophers when it came to discussing the senses, because both discourses
relied on anatomy and physiology. The sense of sight is a good example:
Galenists and Aristotelians shared a common understanding of the structure
of the eye and optic nerve, and of the nature of the physiological principle
involved in sight, namely the “visual spirit.” They both accepted Galen’s
explanation of how abnormalities of sight occurred. Galen identified two
axes of variation in the “visual spirit”: quantitative (abundant or deficient)
and qualitative (clear or turbid). Normal sight required abundant, clear
visual spirit. If the spirit was abundant but turbid, distant objects could be
seen clearly, but not close ones, and vice versa. The two camps differed on
whether the visual spirit exited the eye to contact the object of vision
(extramission, broadly the Galenic view) or whether the spirit received the
visible species from without (intromission, the Aristotelian theory). But
physicians like the Montpellier master Arnau of Vilanova (c. 1240–1311)
agreed with Avicenna: the whole issue could be ignored, since it had no
clinical relevance (Salmón 1997).
The question of the epistemological status of sense knowledge, on the
other hand, could not be evaded, because it struck at the very heart of
medical practice, namely the use of the senses to elicit signs (García
Ballester 1995: 93). In philosophical discourse, sense was often juxtaposed
to reason; it was also associated with experimentum (experience,
experiment), and again, contrasted with reason. These dichotomies had a
long history in medicine, reaching back to the epistemological debates of
the Hellenistic “Rationalists” and “Empirics.” But Galen claimed to be
above the fray of these rival medical sects, and took it as axiomatic that
sense experience was a source of reliable knowledge (Giovacchini 2011).
For his medieval followers, this validation of sense experience was most
persuasively articulated in the experience of anatomical dissection, and in
the rationalization of pharmacy.
Scholastic doctors embraced Galen’s view that dissection was the surest
avenue to knowledge of anatomy, and committed themselves as early as the
twelfth century to anatomical demonstrations on animals. By the end of the
thirteenth century in Bologna, these demonstrations were carried out on
human cadavers. They resulted in a series of texts that represent themselves
as transcripts of what a professor said as he carried out an actual dissection.
Anatomy texts of this genre bristle with the immediate, sensuous language
of plain seeing, but at the same time, they argue for the certainty of
knowledge obtained through sensory experience. One twelfth-century
example, the Second Salernitan Demonstration, narrates the dissection of a
pig. The order of presentation is determined by the sequence in which each
structure becomes visible, beginning with the windpipe, which the
anatomist exposes in opening up the body cavity. Each organ is identified
by visible features and connections, but the anatomist could also manipulate
the dead body to “see” how the living one behaved—for example, by
blowing air through the trachea to inflate the lungs (Corner 1927: 58). The
senses could also be extended by the use of instruments: “Carefully separate
the zirbus [i.e., omentum] from the substance of the spleen and the channels
alone will remain because of their toughness; or put a quill in the middle of
the spleen where it is joined to the zirbus, and insert it lengthwise, and you
will find these channels” (Corner 1927: 62). Threaded through these direct
sensations, however, are lateral references to functions and entities which
cannot be seen. The dissection of the eye, for example, leads seamlessly
into a discussion of the physiology of sight by unveiling the pathways
through which the visual spirit operates: “it emerges through the uveal tunic
and the cornea [and] is mingled with the clear air and transports its rays to
the body, and thus sight is brought about” (Corner 1927: 66). Anatomical
knowledge, in short, could not be acquired by sense alone; it needed the
mental schema furnished by Galenic physiological doctrine, because visible
form and invisible function were intertwined.
The introduction to the Summa de saporibus et odoribus proclaims
Galen’s conviction that reason passes judgment on sensory experience, but
cannot arrive at judgment at all without experience (Burnett 2011: 337). In
Galenic pharmacology, the corroboration of reason and the sensory
experience of taste played a constitutive role.
Drugs were simple substances or compounds with primal qualities
opposite to those of the qualitative distemper in the body into which they
were administered; hence, they could re-balance the patient’s complexion.
Galen expounded this doctrine in On Simple Medicines (De simplici
medicina), which was translated by Constantine the African. Constantine
recycled it as Book 2 of the practica part of the Pantegni, where it joined
another text, On Degrees or Book of Degrees (De gradibus or the Liber
graduum), adapted from Provisions for the Traveler and the Nourishment of
the Settled by al-Gazzār (d. 979/1004). On Degrees explained that a
substance acts as a medicine when its quality alters the substance of the
body which ingests it. These changes are detectable to the senses, and their
strength will range from virtually imperceptible to devastatingly intense.
The physician can test any substance for its quality and degree of intensity
by actually tasting it. If his sense of taste “dominates” the substance’s
quality, then that quality is present in the first degree. If sense and substance
are of equal strength, so that neither dominates the other, the quality is
present in the second degree. If the sense is altered by the substance, but
tolerates this alteration, the substance possesses the quality in the third
degree; but if the alteration is unbearable, in the fourth degree (Wallis
2012).
This doctrine of qualities and degrees stimulated a fierce debate in
medical faculties, because the healthy human was supposed to be warm in
the second degree; hence, a substance warm in the first degree should
register as cold (McVaugh 1965, 1966). The intricacies of this dispute are
not immediately relevant to our theme of the senses, but the existence of the
debate is. The capacity of any sense experience to alter the body is an
axiom of medieval thinking that implicates medicine closely, for depending
on the quality of the alteration, sensation could be health-promoting or
pathogenic. Sight, for example, produced images that were captured, stored,
and retrieved in the ventricles of the brain. The quality of these images
could alter the brain itself, and the whole body (Harvey 1975). The mere
fact that all the organs of sense were windows open to the environment
constituted a potential danger; epidemic diseases like plague, for instance,
could be communicated by sight (Guy de Chauliac 1997: 118.4–6). Thus it
can be said that all sensation involved some incorporation of the object of
sensation, and hence was a kind of tasting, or at least of touch. Avicenna,
following Galen, explained smell as the result of small particles of a
substance breaking loose and floating through the air into the nose, like
smoke, until they were touched by two nipple-like protuberances of the
brain that reached out through the cribriform plate (Avicenna 1522: 131;
Eastwood 1981; Palmer 1993: 62). Even the internal organs could touch
(Salmón 2005).
The importance of the doctor’s senses for diagnosing events internal to
the body from the signs accessible on the surface of or outside the body was
underscored in another of the core texts in the Articella, Hippocrates’
Prognosis. Prognosis stressed attention to visual data, such as the
appearance of the patient’s face and eyes, posture and gestures; acoustic
signs like breathing; and tactile information, e.g., the texture of the belly
and the temperature of the extremities. Urine, vomitus, sputum, sweat, and
other excreta—their color and texture, but also their smell—were
particularly significant. Finally, the patient’s own sensations, and
particularly his pain, were added to the account.
The primary object of diagnosis was the complexion itself—the
combination of elemental qualities specific to every human body, its four
humors, and its several organs. The essentially tangible nature of heat, cold,
moisture, and dryness would seem to bestow a special significance on touch
as a means of detecting complexion. Galen in On Temperaments (De
complexionibus) 2.1–2 states that the hand is the most tempered part of the
body, and hence the physician’s privileged instrument for diagnosing
temperament (Galen 1490: 2.12r–13v). But the Isagoge pressed other
senses into service. Varieties of phlegm, for example, could be
distinguished by taste. Phlegm was naturally insipid, but if mixed with
choler it became “salty,” while “sweet” phlegm partook of the warmth and
moisture of blood, and “acrid” phlegm of the cold, dry nature of
melancholy. The five types of choler, on the other hand, were detected by
color. Choler was “naturally” red, but could be lemon-colored if mixed with
phlegm, the color of egg yolk if mixed with “coagulated phlegm,” or one of
two shades of green (Wallis 2010: 141).
The humors combined to form the homogeneous parts of the body (e.g.,
flesh), and the homogeneous parts formed the organs. While internal organs
could only be sensed by the doctor through intermediate signs, the organs of
sense themselves manifested their temperament to the examining
physician’s senses directly. Pantegni theorica 1.11 explains the use of touch
and vision to ascertain the complexion of the eye. The doctor’s view should
take in the eyes’ color and size in relation to the head, while his touch
assessed heat and moisture (Constantine the African 1515: fol. 3ra).
For the philosophers, touch was a problematic sense because it had no
single organ and no univocal object. Besides temperature—heat and cold—
it could detect moisture and dryness, smooth and rough textures, hardness
and softness. From the doctor’s perspective, though, this was an advantage,
because it extended touch’s signifying range. The Hippocratic Aphorisms—
yet another component of the Articella—regularly reminded the doctor of
the diagnostic significance of hardness and softness, most notably at 5.67:
“The soft are good, the hard are bad.” What is hard or soft, in this case, are
morbid swellings or apostemes.
 Testifying before a commission for the canonization of Saint Peter of
Luxembourg, the Montpellier physician Jean de Tournemire told how in
1387 he diagnosed his own daughter Marguerite with breast cancer. The key
sign was the hardness of the lump: “a nodule like a hazel-nut, hard to the
touch.” Eventually the induration spread over much of the breast, but
Marguerite was miraculously cured by a relic of Saint Peter. The
commissioners cross-examined Jean carefully: was he sure it was cancer?
Invoking his long experience and solid academic training, Jean replied that
he was persuaded by two pieces of sensory information: the swelling started
“from a small induration like a hazelnut,” and it was painful only when
touched. These two conditions were specific to apostemes generated from
scorched melancholy, that is, to cancers; they did not occur in sanguine,
phlegmatic, or choleric swellings (Wallis 2010: 345, 347). The hazelnut
analogy seems to have been a commonplace. Guillaume Boucher (d. 1410),
royal physician and sometime dean of the Paris Faculty, diagnosed
“confirmed cancer” in a Parisian lady by the visual aspect of the breast
(there were “green and black veins spreading in every direction, like a
crab”) and by the texture of the swellings, which felt hard and “were of the
size of hazelnuts” (Wickersheimer 1909: 28).
It was evidently Marguerite herself who reported the pain when the
swelling was touched, though Jean’s deliberate touch constituted the test for
pain. Pain, one of the most significant diagnostic signs, belonged to the
patient alone, and was understood to be experienced through touch, but it
became a sign only when conveyed to and interpreted by the doctor (Cohen
2010: Ch. 3; Salmón 2005: 66–7, 2011). Perhaps because it stood at the
crossroads of the doctor’s knowledge and the patient’s experience, touch
was crucial to the physician’s authority. We shall explore this in a moment,
in relation to the pulse.
Smell emerged into prominence as a signifier only at the end of the
thirteenth century, and in texts composed by surgeons rather than
physicians. Writing in the 1290s, Lanfranc of Milan proposed that a putrid
ulcer or a cancer could be distinguished from an ordinary wound by smell:
it “has its own stench, one that cannot be put into words but that can be told
from other stenches by anybody who is familiar with cancers” (McVaugh
2002: 115). Later thirteenth-century surgery texts began to include
discussions of bad breath and stinking armpits as signs of internal
distemper. Underarm odor, according to Henri de Mondeville (d. after
1316), was caused by internal putrefaction and could be cured by a
purgative that would “cleanse the corrupt humors from the body and expel
them in a large volume of stinking urine” (McVaugh 2002: 123).
Mondeville took it for granted that the practitioner would notice the smell
of the urine: indeed, Avicenna classified various smells of urine, such as
sweet and acid, as indicators of the dominance of particular humors
(Avicenna 1522: fol. 42v). As manifestations of putrefaction, body odors
were a source of infection: the “Four Masters’ Gloss” on the Surgery of
Roland of Parma (composed after 1230) single out lupus and noli me
tangere as diseases with such a bad smell that they posed a danger to
anyone drawing near (McVaugh 2002: 115). The Four Masters also link bad
breath to leprosy, while Bernard de Gordon says that longstanding
underarm or bodily odor without other evident cause is a sign of incipient
leprosy (McVaugh 2002: 131).
On the whole, though, physicians were somewhat reserved about
smelling their patients’ bodies or excreta. The fifteenth-century Italian
professor Gabriele Zerbi made it clear in his manual of professional conduct
that he “declined to sniff his patients’ breath” (Palmer 1993: 67). For the
learned doctor, two senses dominated diagnosis: sight and touch. Through
his trained eye, the physician could analyze urine, while his exquisite touch
decoded the pulse. Urine, the waste product of the manufacture of blood
from food, was an index of the functioning of the natural spirit; pulse was
the throbbing of the arteries that carried air that had been “processed” by
the vital spirit from the heart and lungs to the rest of body, and hence was
an indicator of the state of that spirit.
Medieval uroscopy was a specialized art of seeing (Moulinier-Brogi
2012). The conventional iconography of the doctor showed him holding up
the glass urine flask or “jordan” to the light, to better assess the color of the
urine, its consistency, the suspended particles and their sedimentation (see
Figure 6.1). A manual of urine inspection by the Byzantine writer
Theophilus was incorporated into the Articella , and if it was later eclipsed
by Isaac Judaeus’s treatise or the poem On Urines (De urinis) by Gilles de
Corbeil (c. 1140–1214), the overall schema of sensory clues was fairly
constant. Gilles explained that urine exhibited twenty possible colors in a
spectrum from alba to nigra, the palest denoting lack of digestion, and
hence of heat, and the darkest betokening excessive burning or “adustion”
of the humors (Vieillard 1903: 273–89). These colors were depicted in
graphic memoranda in the form of charts or wheels (Jones 1998: 54, Fig.
46). Color was the key to the hot-cold dyad, but thick or thin consistency
indicated relative moisture or dryness. What floated in or settled out of the
urine was for Gilles of crucial significance. These contents included
“bubbles, grit, cloudiness, spume, pus, grease, chyme, blood, sand, hair,
bran, lumps, scales, specks, sperm, ash, sediment, and rising vapor” (Grant
1974: 749). The doctor’s eye, in short, had to master a lexicon of shapes
and textures as well as a spectrum of colors.
 FIGURE 6.1:The physician examines urine in a jordan. From a
fourteenth-century manuscript of the Antidotarium Nicolai.
Oxford, All Souls College MS 72 fol. 5r. Reproduced by
permission of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College,
Oxford.

The protocol for this visual ritual is outlined by Isaac Judaeus (1966:
153). The doctor must choose a brightly-lit place, with the sun opposite.
Holding the flask in his right hand, he should pass his left hand behind it to
determine whether the urine is clear or turbid. He should move the flask
gently to assess the lightness of the sediment and how rapidly it settled. But
should the physician also smell, or even taste, the urine? Theoretically, yes,
because taste was the sense that offered the most direct access to the nature
of a substance (Burnett 2011: 337). Isaac discusses tasting urine in a matter-
of-fact manner: urine which is bitter betokens excessive red bile, acid urine
indicates acidic phlegm, and salty urine, salt phlegm (Isaac Judaeus 1966:
162). However, most textbooks of uroscopy focused exclusively on sight.
Some medieval health care consumers tested a doctor’s competence by
bringing him a fake urine sample of white wine or nettle tea. To evade these
tricks, Arnau of Vilanova advised taking a surreptitious sniff of the contents
of the jordan, or sneaking a taste on the end of one’s finger (Sigerist 1946:
135–43). The fact that these gestures are regarded as subterfuges reinforces
the impression that urine was normally judged by sight. Nonetheless, the
implication that learned physicians poked their noses into excreta, or even
put it into their mouths, was fodder for satire. The doctors at the papal
court, excoriated by Petrarch in his Invective, are hardly exemplars of
health. Indeed, they are pale and emaciated because they “rummage around
in sloshing chamber-pots.” The dark, fetid atmosphere of the close-stool
seeps into their bodies: “I say that your color, smell, and taste come from
the stuff to which you are exposed—shit” (Petrarch 2003: 81).
The prestige of the sense of sight helped offset the undignified nature of
its object, urine. Sight was the most spiritual of the senses, associated with
light, and the element of fire which occupied the highest rung in the
physical universe. Hearing came next, being linked to air; smell was
conveyed by a sort of vapor; taste, and above all, touch, were earthy. Touch
was the sense which all animals shared, and hence not exclusive to humans
(Salmón 2005: 64–5; Vinge 1975: 47–58). Yet Galen associated the hand
not only with the highest human faculty of reason, but with touch itself, in
its most refined and informative manifestation. Pulse diagnosis was
grounded in this acutely refined and discriminating sense of touch.
Uroscopy was a public performance before an audience who listened as
the doctor described aloud what he saw in the jordan, displaying his
learning and detective skills to the patient and bystanders (see Figure 6.1).
But doctors worried that publicity made uroscopy easy for empirics to
imitate (Stolberg 2007). Pulse-taking had the advantage of being esoteric;
only the physician’s senses were involved, and the process unfolded in
silent concentration.
 Galen’s numerous treatises on pulse diagnosis laid out a complex array of
tactile sensations, each with a coded medical message (Harris 1973: Ch. 7).
In the Summa pulsuum, a thirteenth-century didactic digest of this doctrine,
they are presented in the form of an analytical grid with five axes: the
motion of the artery itself, the condition of the artery, the duration of
diastole and systole, the trend of the pulsation to grow stronger or weaker,
and the regularity of the beat. Each axis was minutely subdivided. For
example, the motions of the artery were classified according to quantity and
quality. Quantitatively, the motion could be large, small, or in-between. This
would register on the physician’s finger in three dimensions: length,
breadth, and depth. Relative heat and cold were conveyed by the length of
the pulse; moisture and dryness in its breadth. Whether a pulse was evident
on the surface or hidden in the depths was a sign of the overall strength of
the heart. In addition, the doctor’s fingers had to register the speed of the
pulse. This involved exquisite discrimination, for a “rapid” dilation was
defined as one which ended more quickly than it began, while a “slow”
dilation ended more slowly (Grant 1974: 746). Unfortunately, no text
reveals how a trainee physician actually learned what these distinctions felt
like. Even in scenes of “bedside teaching” (see Figure 6.2), student and
teacher are never shown feeling the pulse together. It is even less evident
how one learned to recognize the special pulse rhythms, evocatively named
after scurrying ants (formicans) or leaping antelopes (gazellans), and
described in terms redolent of connoisseurship. A gazellans pulse, for
example, is “diverse in the first part when it will be slower, and then it is
interrupted, and becomes rapid” (Avicenna 1522: fol. 38r–v). Is this a
“literary” sense experience, comparable to the poetic meters or musical
harmonies that were alleged to be detectable in the pulse? Writers on the
quadrivium like Boethius and Martianus Capella were captivated by the
idea of pulse-music—a true musica humana linking body and soul together,
and binding man to the macrocosmic “music of the spheres.” Most
physicians, ancient and medieval, were skeptical. Such comparisons seemed
impossible to confirm, and useless from a diagnostic standpoint (Barton
2002: 12 and Ch. 3; Siraisi 1975). Besides distinguishing qualities and
temperaments, diagnosis could also distinguish diseases; Jean de
Tournemire, it will be recalled, was sure that his senses could differentiate
cancer from any other kind of aposteme. Leprosy was a disease where such
differential diagnosis placed special demands on the doctor’s senses.

FIGURE 6.2: A physician-professor feels the patient’s head

while a student examines the pulse. From a fourteenth-
century MS of Hippocrates, Prognosis. Vienna,
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 2320, fol. 91v.
Reproduced by permission of the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek.
 Though the number of lepers in Western Europe seems to have dropped
markedly after the end of the twelfth century, public perception of the
disease at this same juncture began to shift from revulsion and pity to
increasing, if sporadic, anxiety about contagion. Whether a person was a
leper or not began to matter in more potentially negative ways, and civil
and ecclesiastical regulations envisioned, even if they did not enforce,
segregation. In the Kingdom of Aragon, the early decades of the fourteenth
century saw the replacement of the old system of assessment by priests and
boards of lepers themselves with forensic examination by physicians
(McVaugh 1993: 218–25). Doctors had to determine how diagnosis of one
particular disease could be conducted with a high degree of certainty
(Demaitre 2007: Ch. 7; Rawcliffe 2006: Ch. 4).
To complicate matters further, the signs of leprosy are highly variable.
Changes to the color and texture of the skin and hair, ulceration of nasal and
oral mucosa, and damage to the peripheral nerves may be indicative. Taken
separately, they could point to diseases other than leprosy, so diagnosis
depended on the concurrence of a number of distinctive signs. Jordanus de
Turre (fl. c. 1310–35) recommended that the examining physician write
down the signs in two columns, one for good signs and the other for bad,
ostensibly to avoid confusion, but also to be able to calculate whether the
number of bad signs sufficed to tip the scales. What Jordanus says about
lepers’ urine and pulse is not particularly specific. Instead, the doctor should
first listen to the patient sing, because a hoarse voice may be a sign of
leprosy. His visual inspection of the patient’s body must be minute and
targeted. Body hair should be inspected at close range, because in lepers it
is unusually fine and straight; Jordanus recommends doing this in strong
sunlight. Because erosion of the nasal cartilage is diagnostic, the doctor’s
inquisitive eye must venture into a space that even the patient cannot see:
“Cut a small wooden wand and fork it like tongs and introduce it into the
nose, expanding it; then examine the interior with a lighted candle. If you
see within an ulceration or excoriation in the deepest part of the nose, it is a
sign of leprosy itself; this is a sign which is known not to all but to the wise
only.” The doctor should also make the patient undress completely, “to see
whether his skin is darkened and to see if its surface feels rough with a
certain smoothness at the same time.” But finding out whether a patient has
lost sensation was exceptionally difficult, because lepers deliberately sought
to conceal this well-known symptom. Jordanus suggests a cunning way to
circumvent this reticence: “Make the patient cover his eyes so that he
cannot see and say, ‘Look out, I’m going to prick you!’ and do not prick
him. Then say, ‘I pricked you on the foot’; and if he agrees, it is a sign of
leprosy” (Grant 1974: 755; cf. Demaitre 1985).
Finally, it is important to note the social and cultural limitations on the
doctor’s use of his senses. He normally could not look at or touch the
genitals of a woman, and this had implications for both diagnosis and
therapy. Texts written by and for male physicians refer to topical treatments
of gynecological disorders in the passive voice, e.g. “Let her be anointed
…” On the other hand, the segment of the Trotula ensemble that was
probably written by a woman, On Treatments for Women, uses the first and
second persons in the active voice (Green 2008: 45–58). Various forms of
mediated diagnosis and therapy served to shield practitioner and patient
from the scandal of direct touching. A physician could engage a female
associate, perhaps a midwife, to perform an examination. She was expected
to report what she felt or saw to the doctor, but he alone was qualified to say
what these sensations meant; the woman, in short, was a remote sensing
device for the physician (Lemay 1985). The Italian surgeon Guglielmo da
Saliceto, writing in around 1268–75, argued that it was acceptable for a
surgeon to directly examine the private parts provided he did so behind the
barrier of an instrument; he recommended using a cupping glass to open the
vagina to view, an improvement over Avicenna’s solution, a mirror (Green
2008: 99).
Scholastic therapeutics was divided into three branches: regimen of diet
and lifestyle; drug therapy to rectify qualitative distemper or expel corrupt
humors; and surgery, whether for purposes of evacuation (bloodletting,
cupping) or to repair trauma. Surgery, surprisingly, was rarely discussed
from the perspective of the patient’s senses. There were recipes for general
anesthetics to be taken orally or inhaled from an impregnated sponge, but it
is not known how frequently these were used (McVaugh 2006: 106–10;
Voigts and Hudson 1992). Drug therapy paid somewhat greater attention to
the patient’s sensations. One of the virtues of compound medicines,
according to the commentary on the Antidotarium Nicolai ascribed to
Platearius of Salerno (third quarter of twelfth century) was that ingredients
could be added to make the drug more palatable: the revolting taste of
aloes, for example, could be offset by honey and sugar (Grant 1974: 787).
But a drug could be administered by other means than through the mouth,
and implicate senses other than taste. Guillaume Boucher recommended
that a bourgeoise with breast cancer continually wear emeralds, sapphires,
and rubies. Though Boucher does not spell this out, the rationale was that
the brilliance, color, and beauty of these gems, entering through the eyes,
would counteract the dark and destructive melancholy that was the cause of
the cancer. In De proprietatibus rerum 16.87, for example, Bartholomew
the Englishman claims that wearing sapphires was effective against “every
melancholic ailment” (Bartholomew the Englishman 1601: 759). Boucher
also prescribed an electuary containing chips of emeralds and sapphires, as
well as jacinths, shaved ivory, and “Byzantine purple,” bound with “the
juice of very fragrant pears” (Wickersheimer 1909: 89–91, trans. Wallis
2010: 349–51). The power of the jewels therefore operated through sight,
touch, and taste, intensified by smell. A similar convergence of vision and
touch cured the young son of the king of England of smallpox. John of
Gaddesden (c. 1280–1361) claims that the color red was the therapeutic
agent. By wrapping the prince up in scarlet cloth and furnishing the
sickroom with red hangings, “I cured him without any vestiges of the
smallpox” (John of Gaddesden 1492: fol. 51r; trans. Wallis 2010: 274).
Given how close the sense of smell was to that of taste, it comes as little
surprise that aromatherapy was a staple of medieval preventive and curative
medicine. Unlike its modern version, medieval aromatherapy used repulsive
as well as pleasant smells. Bartholomew the Englishman recommends
burning goat’s horn to make a stench to revive a man from lethargy
(Bartholomew the Englishman 1601: 284). Some organs within the body
could detect and respond to fair and foul odors—the uterus, for example.
The condition called “suffocation of the uterus” has a lengthy pedigree in
classical medicine. Hippocratic texts thought that a dry and overheated
uterus literally flew up through the body cavity to latch onto the liver,
causing palpitations, a sensation of choking, and fainting. When anatomical
dissection proved that the uterus could not wander in this manner, other
causes were brought forward, such as vapors generated in the womb from
rotting “seed” that rose up to smother the higher organs (King 1998: Ch.
11). Nonetheless, some therapies for uterine suffocation were based
implicitly on the discarded Hippocratic etiology. The Trotula prescribes
inhaling foul smells through the nose, while sweet smells are introduced
into the vagina (Green 2001: 85). The unexpressed rationale is that the
uterus can be coaxed back to its wonted place by the sweet smelling
“carrot,” and at the same time driven thither by the bad-smelling “stick.”
Active response to smell also played a critical role in preventive
medicine through regimens that regulated the “non-naturals”: air; food and
drink; exercise and rest; sleep and wakefulness; retention and elimination;
and psychological states, or “accidents of the soul” (Gil-Sotres 1998;
Nicoud 2007; Rather 1968). Air was the most important of these, but the
least amenable to control. One could mitigate its qualities by modifying
clothing, taking or avoiding baths, or opening and closing windows to
winds or drafts. Above all, one could judge the salubrity of the air by sight
and smell, and take precautions. Perfumes burned in a brazier or fireplace
not only made the sick-room more agreeable, they counteracted the bad
smells which actually conveyed corruption (Palmer 1993: 63, 66). But it
was next to impossible to rectify the air of a whole town or region. And in
the case of an apparently universal disease like plague, even change of
location might not help.
Medical accounts of the Black Death ascribed the ubiquity of the plague
to a global atmospheric crisis. According to the 1348 report of the Faculty
of Medicine of Paris, the malignant conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars
in March of 1345, together with other celestial phenomena, engendered a
deadly corruption of the air that lay below the heavenly spheres. The effect
of the convergent qualities of these planets was to draw up vapors from the
earth, which a mild, wet winter caused to putrefy, and which strong winds
spread over the earth (Horrox 1994: 159–61). “Humidity,” said Dr. Jacme
d’Agramont of Lerida, “is the mother of putrefaction” (Duran-Reynals and
Winslow 1949: 66). When the air is unseasonably humid, mists arise which
penetrate through the eyes, befogging the spirits of the human body and
causing sadness and disease. The air will look murky, filled with dust, and
drained of color. Putrefaction of the air can also be smelled—indeed, it can
be caused by smells from sewage or decaying dead animals, or the stench of
tanneries. Fruit and grain tainted by pestilential air will quickly rot, and will
have a strange odor; bread made from such tainted grain “keeps neither
taste nor flavour as it used to do in other years” (Duran-Reynals and
Winslow 1949: 73). Even before the symptoms break out, plague can be
seen, smelled, and tasted. The only solution was to rectify the morbific fog
by building fires of aromatic wood like cypress and lavender, or tossing
perfumed pellets of camphor on a brazier. The poor could counteract the
smell of corrupted air by sprinkling vinegar and rosewater (Duran-Reynals
and Winslow 1949: 79–80).
Another sense-based prophylaxis recommended by d’Agramont targets
emotional states. To control the imagination in time of plague was essential.
He advised that church bells not be tolled in time of pestilence “because the
sick are subject to evil imaginings when they hear the death bells” (Duran-
Reynals and Winslow 1949: 84). D’Agramont is merely generalizing a
principle that had been stated by others in the context of managing the
illnesses of individuals. Arnau de Vilanova, discussing contingencies that
are beyond the doctor’s control, but which have a decisive impact on the
outcome of illness, includes “the sound of bells, or the shouting of children
and barking of dogs and rumble of carts, or the fire and wreck of a home, or
flooding by rains and gusting of winds, or the rumor that something or
someone beloved is lost … or such other things …” (McVaugh and García
Ballester 1995: 85). The list is interesting because it suggests that loud
sounds, even benign ones that would be inconsequential in ordinary life,
like the noisy play of children, could be as distressing to a patient as a real
calamity.
Could the reverse be the case? More precisely, could music of a certain
quality promote healing? Medieval medical writers seem to concur with this
ancient belief, which like the doctrine of pulse music tapped into the
symbolism of harmonies binding the cosmos and the soul. In practice,
however, the use of music therapy was more pragmatic. Even without
benefit of heavenly harmonics, music could calm and cheer a sick person,
and in the framework of the non-naturals, this emotional pleasure and uplift
would promote healing (Horden 2007; Page 2000). Clergy seemed more
strongly persuaded that mental disorders in particular could actually be
cured by music, calling to mind David harping before the despondent King
Saul (1 Samuel 20: 9–10), while forgetting that the treatment failed to work.
The chronicler Gaspar Ofhuys, describing the mental breakdown of the
painter Hugo van der Goes (d. 1482) after he became a conversus in the
Red Cloister near Brussels, seems unsurprised that the music therapy
prescribed by the kindly abbot Thomas did not help, though he presents it as
a reasonable treatment for melancholy and phrenitis magna (Goes 1958:
10–15, trans. Wallis 2010: 351–6; cf. Jones 2000).
The last of the three branches of therapy, surgery, brings us back to the
issue of the practitioner’s senses, for as the “work of the hand” surgery
granted unprecedented importance to the sense of touch. In the absence of
anesthesia and antisepsis, surgery rarely penetrated far into the body, but
when it did so, touch was the operator’s surrogate for sight. Describing an
operation to remove a bladder stone, Teodorico Borgognoni (1205–98)
specifies that the patient should be positioned on the table with his knees
drawn up to expose the perineum. The surgeon then inserts his finger in the
anus and feels around for the stone in the bladder. When he has located it,
he uses his finger to move the stone into a suitable position, so that an
incision can be made through the perineum into the bladder. Pressure from
the finger in the anus will also expel the stone through the incision
(Teodorico Borgognoni 1960: 128–9).
An elaborate combination of direct touch and touch mediated by an
instrument is described in the treatise on repairing anal fistula by the
English surgeon John Arderne (1307–after 1377). The practitioner must first
establish whether the fistula penetrates to the rectum or bowel. He does this
by inserting a probe into the fistula, and introducing his finger into the anus
(see Figure 6.3). He must then “assay busily” to feel the end of the probe
with his finger; if he can do this, the fistula has penetrated (Arderne 1910:
22). The intimate connection between the surgeon’s touch and the tool
which is its extension is reflected in the name which Arderne bestowed on
his probe: sequere me (follow me). The hand that holds the probe “follows”
its sensations into places where his finger cannot go.
 John Arderne uses his finger and his sequere me
FIGURE 6.3:
probe to examine an anal fistula. From a fifteenth-century
MS of the Practica of John Arderne. London, British
Library MS Sloane 2002, fol. 24v. Reproduced by
permission of The British Library.

Medicine in the Middle Ages encompassed both more and less than its
modern descendant. The opportunities for investigating the body and
intervening in its workings were far more circumscribed, but medieval
medicine acknowledged a relationship to the psychological and spiritual
experience of the patient that modern medicine either excludes or delegates.
The role of the senses highlights this distinctive profile. Diagnosis without
instrumentation is diagnosis through immediate sensory signs: the color of
urine, the throb of the pulse, the texture of a tumor, the smell of armpits, the
sound of the voice. Therapy likewise demanded that the physician or
surgeon engage his own senses, even when instruments assisted; but it also
recruited the patient’s senses through the taste of simples, the sight of
emeralds, the smell of rosewater, and the sound of music. Barriers to the
senses were erected between male doctor and female patient, but dissolved
before the intrusive probing of the leper’s nostrils. Sight, the noblest sense,
and touch, the most base, met in the physician’s signature diagnostic tests of
uroscopy and pulse-taking. The senses of medicine are mirrors of the
medieval world, with all its contradictions of formal hierarchy and startling
intimacy, its inversions of high and low.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
_____________________________________

The Senses in Literature:

The Textures of Perception
VINCENT GILLESPIE

Literature is a phenomenon of the senses before it is an experience of the

intellect (Vinge 1975). All aesthetic experiences by Aristotelian definition
appeal to and work through the senses. The philosophical aphorism nihil est
in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu (there is nothing in the intellect that
was not first in the senses), often associated with John Locke, was already
in use in the Middle Ages (Cranefield 1970). It is cited by Henry of Ghent
and by Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, acutely aware of the senses throughout
his writings, paraphrases it in Paradiso IV.40–2 (Boyde 1993; Mazzotta
1993). It maps the fundamental cognitive pathway of human apprehension
and comprehension. The noise the words make as they come through the
ears, their disposition on the page, and the paratextual adornments,
illustrations, illuminations and elaborations of their layout in a book, impact
the eyes; the vellum or paper of the text and the leather of the binding
stimulate the touch; and, before the era of silent reading, the very
enunciation and rhythm of the words as they were tongued in performance
engage the mouth in a taste of the shape and sharpness of consonants and
vowels (Cruse 2010).
Reading was a performative act as well as an imaginative one. Even after
the growth of silent reading, medieval readers listened to and spoke with the
voces paginarum, surrendering to the sensory world of the unfolding text
(Leclercq 1961; Saenger 1997). Their responses were shaped by the cursus
of the words and the ductus of the argument (Carruthers 1998). Before the
twelfth century, the psalmist’s multisensual phrase “O taste and see how
gracious/sweet the Lord is” was more often applied to the reading of sacred
scripture than it was to the ingestion of the Eucharist (Carruthers 2006;
Fulton 2006).
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the growing interest in processes
of cognition had the ancillary effect of sharpening attention to the ways in
which literature worked in the human sensorium and psyche (Jütte 2005;
Nichols et al. 2008; Pasnau 1997). The reception of Aristotle into the
medieval West gave commentators a new vocabulary with which to think
about and discuss these issues (Gillespie 2005). Two of his core ideas
circulated widely as isolated aphorisms rather than as part of sustained
analyses, and attained the status of cultural truisms. In his Metaphysics,
Aristotle had begun with the assertion that “All men naturally desire to
know. A sign of this is the delight we take in the senses,” while the patchy
and idiosyncratic reception of Aristotle’s Poetics meant that his much
anthologized claim that “man naturally delights in representations” was
seen as a reinforcement of Horace’s comment in the Art of Poetry (Ad
Pisonem) that “what comes in through the ear is less effective in stirring the
mind than what is put before our faithful eyes and told by the spectator to
himself” (Ars poetica 180). Such ideas achieved wide circulation and
influenced the recognition of literature as a sensual art (Dronke 2002).
Although painters as late as Leonardo asserted the primacy of painting
over poetry because of the immediacy of its appeal to the sight, poets
claimed the ability to paint pictures using the phantasms generated by the
imagination. Sight and vision were acknowledged as the highest sense
faculties by writers, both physically in the head and metaphysically
(Biernoff 2002; Denery 2005; Marrone 2001; Nelson 2000; Newhauser
2010; Tachau 1988). In the Fulgentian tradition of ekphrasis, whereby
readers or listeners were invited to imagine a particularly complicated
visual image as a symbolic representation of some classical God or
personified abstraction, the texts often begin with the phrase “it is painted
or depicted by the poets,” but ekphrastic poetry routinely requires the
blurring of sensual boundaries involved in imaginative performance of the
text by its audience (Carruthers 1990; Carruthers and Ziolkowski 2002;
Debiais 2013; Smalley 1960). All these effects are part of the special force
of literature, which Greek and Roman authors and theorists called enargeia
(Zanker 1981). In his thirteenth-century French vernacular Bestiare
d’Amours, the scholarly bibliophile Richard de Fournival ruminates on the
ways that literature impacts the human sensorium, using an example of one
of the most popular secular literary texts, the narrative of the city of Troy.
He begins his prologue with Aristotle’s dictum “All men naturally desire to
know,” before going on to argue that the divinely provided storehouse of
Memory has two sensual doors, Sight and Hearing, approached by two
sensual pathways, Depiction (serving the eye) and Description (serving the
ear). Memory, as a higher intellectual faculty, guards a man’s treasury of
knowledge, and “renders the past as if it were present” (Richard de
Fournival 1986). Addressing his absent beloved, Richard offers her
Depiction and Description so that his own absence from her can be
overcome by the sensual presence of the text. The book, with its
multisensual appeal and tangible and audible presence, is to substitute for,
and plead on behalf of, its absent maker.
The spread of Aristotelian views brought the relationship between the
senses and the imagination to new prominence in discussions of mental
processes, especially in commentaries on his De anima and Metaphysics,
where he comments that “in men science and art come from experience …
Art comes into being when from many conceptions acquired by experience
a single universal judgment is formed about similar things” (Schofield in
Nussbaum and Rorty 1992). This interest had begun among Arab scholars
in previous centuries (Harvey 1975). Avicenna, at the start of his shorter
commentary on the Poetics, had carefully distinguished between assent (the
end of rhetoric) and imagination (the end of poetic): “Poetic premises are
premises whose role is to cause acts of imagination, and not assent, to befall
the soul, whenever they are accepted” (Black 1989). Both Gundisalinnus
and Al-Farabi tellingly comment that “Imagination is always more
powerfully at work in mankind than knowledge or thought” (Dahan 1980;
Domenicus Gundisalvus 1903). Cognate ideas are also found in widely
popular pseudo-Augustinian attempts to schematize the processes of
perception and intellection, such as the helpfully brisk twelfth-century Liber
de spiritu et anima: “When the mind wants to rise up from lower to higher
things, we first meet with the sense, then imagination, then reason,
intellection and understanding, and at the top is wisdom” (cap. XI, PL 40:
786). The ethical trajectory of this process is explicit: “Sense shapes and
informs the imagination; imagination the reason; out of this, the reason
generates knowledge or prudence” (PL 40: 787). The end of this process is
sapientia or wisdom, a word commonly etymologized as related to sapor or
taste, and so implicating the highest forms of knowledge and understanding
with the flavors of the sensorium. “Taste and see”: in Middle English
sapience is often defined as a “savory science” (Riehle 1981). Imagination,
in all these models, is the bridge between the senses and the intellect, a key
link between the apprehension of sense data and the comprehension of it
through a process of gradual abstraction, refinement, and intellectual
generalization, a movement from particular observations and the experience
of specific sensations to universalizing knowledge (Karnes 2011).
Literature’s role as a stimulus to the imagination, and a challenge to the
estimative and evaluative faculties, meant that the power of imaginative
writing (or Poetic as it was usually known in the Middle Ages) was
recognized and reflected on with a new seriousness.
There was a growing recognition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
that poetry constituted a special branch of logic. Poetic discourse, it was
argued, works by appealing to the imagination by means of similitude to
produce an emotional response. Poetry generates an image that provokes an
instinctive moral judgment from the estimative faculty by the force of its
impact on the senses and affections of its audience. This affective response
is more powerful as an instrument of morality than argument or
demonstration because it involves the psyche of the audience in a
simulation of the processes of choice and assessment found in real life. The
affective force of such texts acted on the imagination of its readers or
hearers in powerful and unpredictable ways. Different criteria for analysis
and assessment were needed because poetry was essentially a private
experience, in contrast to the originally public nature of classical forensic
rhetoric and its medieval sibling preaching.
The classicism and incipient Aristotelianism of Robert Grosseteste (d.
1253), first lector of the Oxford Franciscans, provided an early and
influential opportunity for the exploration of these ideas. Grosseteste’s
lectures on affectivity, originally given at the beginning of the liberal arts
course at Oxford (De artibus liberalibus: McEvoy 1979, 1982, 1994, 1995),
offers a succinct account of his thinking on the psychological relationship
between reason, will, and the senses, between logic and emotion, and
between what he calls the intellectus or aspectus and the affectus. His pithy
formulations were later translated and incorporated into a fifteenth-century
Middle English guide to the liberal arts (Grosseteste 1912; Mooney 1993).
According to Richard Southern, fundamental to Grosseteste’s thinking on
the power of the affections is the principle that the mind can see no further
than it can love: the range of the affectus limits the mind’s aspectus. He
elaborates this view in his Hexaemeron and in his Commentary on
Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics:

The mind cannot argue about general concepts when its aspectus or range of vision is still
clouded by the confused assault of corporeal images. It is only when this limitation has been
overcome by purifying the mind from sensual lusts and by engaging in calm consideration, that
the mind’s affectus can rise from the chaos of sense impressions to the clarity of the general
laws of which these sense impressions are harbingers … The assault of sense impressions …
awaken the mind from sleep and set it on its voyage of discovery.
Southern 1993
FIGURE 7.1: Aristotle and Logic among the Seven Liberal
Arts, second quarter of the fifteenth century. Salzburg,
Universitätsbibliothek MS M III 36, fol. 240v. Source:
Wikimedia,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Unibib
liotek_Salzburg_Artes_liberales_Logica.jpg.
 FIGURE 7.2: Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln; from
London, British Library MS Harley 3860, fol. 48, thirteenth
century. Source: Wikimedia,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Gross
eteste_bishop.jpg.

Grossetete expresses this view in the aphorism “reason sleeps until it is

awakened by the senses.” Having processed sense data, the affectus yearns
to embrace what is attractive or withdraws in flight from what is noxious.
Grammar and Logic among the trivium arts address the aspective gaze of
the mind. But Rhetoric persuades concerning those things that a man should
flee or desire temperately. It has the power to excite and awaken those who
are sluggish and somnolent, to make audacious those who are fearful and
timorous, and to make docile those who are cruel and rowdy. Rhetoric is the
lyre of Orpheus by whose melody stones and trees are divided, and it
creates peace between the wolf and the lamb, the dog and the hare, the calf
and the lion, when they hear the sweet sound of this harp. The rhythms of
music move a soul in harmony with the meters of the universe. This applies
equally to the meters and rhythms of poetry. Just as the end of theology is
knowledge that becomes wisdom, so the end of rhetoric can be seen to be
the moving of the affectus leading to an engaged and ethically alert
attentiveness to the moral issues of life and of art.
Grosseteste put these ideas into practice in his own writings, notably the
Chateau d’Amour (second quarter, thirteenth century), a personification
allegory of the kind that becomes the default generic choice when medieval
writers wish to explore the taxonomies of human psychology and the
mechanics of sense perception and understanding (Akbari 2004;
Grosseteste 1918; Sajavaara 1967). Grosseteste’s allegory of salvation
history argues that the sins of mankind in each of the five senses are
precisely reflected and redeemed in the sufferings and wounds inflicted on
Christ in the Crucifixion; it highlights the reliance of doubting Thomas on
his fallible human senses instead of on his faith in the risen Christ, and it
describes the pains of hell in terms that focus very precisely on each of the
five outer senses. These strategies are often repeated in medieval religious
writing: Anglo-Saxon sermons and moral discourses (Fera 2011, 2012), the
anchoritic ruminations of Ancrene Wisse, Anglo-Norman moralizations
(Hunt et al. 2010), the very structure of Henry de Grosmont’s Livre de
Seyntz Medicines (Henry of Lancaster 1940), and Jacob’s Well (caps.
xxxiv–xxxv; Brandeis 1900), or Walter Hilton’s advice to new recluses in
The Scale of Perfection (covering most of the standard taxonomies in Scale
1.10–11; 55; 78; 81), and in his Latin De imagine peccati (Hilton 1987).
Typically, the five senses are the watergates of depravity letting corruption
into the pit or well of the soul, which will have to be dug out by the tools of
penance, and the windows through which temptation and disease enter into
the body and soul (Bremmer 1987).
But the imaginative appeal of sensuality and the literary pleasures of its
forbidden fruits manifest themselves in baroquely elaborate ways. The
ingenious contrapassi of the suffering in Dante’s Commedia (and his
imaginatively virtuosic use of the senses in, for example, Inferno IV and
Purgatorio I, XVI, and XVII), and the popular genre of Visions of the
Otherworld and Visits to St. Patrick’s Purgatory (to which Grosseteste also
contributed an Anglo-Norman text), tantalize the sensibilities and
sensitivities of their audiences with precisely targeted relish in their detailed
attention to the extremity of the torments suffered by the purged and the
damned (Classen 2012). Indeed, the sustained demonstration of sensory
overload is found in literary contexts as diverse as the Old English account
of the feast staged by Holofernes prior to his murder by Judith, and in the
account of the feasting of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar in the Middle
English poem Clannesse, where excessive sensuality is always a
prefiguration of moral downfall. As the Gawain-Poet explicitly and
implicitly explores in his linked quartet of moral dilemmas, the beatitude
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” has a strong basis in
medieval sensory theory (Bloomfield 2011a, 2011b; Whiteford 2004). John
of Metz’s schematic Turris sapientiae defines Purity in precisely sensual
terms: “Act soberly; Do not be dramatic; Do not be gluttonous; Do not be
drunk; Close your ears; Control your sight; Curb your sense of smell;
Temper your sense of taste; Restrain your touching” (Carruthers and
Ziolkowski 2002; Sandler 1983).
Writing in the first generation to have access to texts and translations of
many important philosophical texts, Roger Bacon (c. 1220–c. 1292) was
one of the first academics to lecture on some of Aristotle’s physical and
metaphysical works. Following on Grosseteste’s own affective psychology,
Roger Bacon’s studies led him into sustained reflection on the ethical
impact and affective force of literary texts, which was in tune with an
emergent trend in contemporary literary theory. His Moralis philosophia
describes our intellectus as deaf to the delight in harmony that comes from
contemplation of the eternal truths of God’s glory (citing Avicenna on the
Metaphysics), and blind as a bat to the light of the sun of truth (citing
Aristotle directly). He quotes Avicenna to the effect that our affectus should
operate like a guide or helper towards delectable food which at the present
time in our fallen state the mind or soul is unable to taste or sense. The
affectus must be engaged or tempted towards the direction of these delights.
Aristotle had asserted in the Ethics that moral science used rhetorical
arguments rather than logical demonstration. The practical intellect must be
excited and provoked into moral action, and this is harder to do than to
encourage the mind into abstract speculation. Rhetorical persuasion
therefore has three functions in moral work: to move to belief, to good
works, and to right judgment. For these to work, the audience must be
docile, well-intentioned, and focused. Therefore, the audience must be
helped by the sensory pleasures of the text. One rhetorical display of
persuasive art is worth a thousand logical demonstrations: rhetoric moves
the practical intellect by moving the soul. Bacon cites Al-Farabi as teaching
that such rhetorical persuasions work through the beauty of their
presentation. Bacon’s application of this argument to the work of moral
philosophy is buttressed by reference to Book 4 of Augustine’s On
Christian Doctrine, and its citation of the Ciceronian function of the orator:
“to teach, delight, and persuade.” He also observes that Scripture uses
rhetorical ornament in various places, and that this is part of the moral work
of that text.
 FIGURE 7.3: Turris Sapientiae (Tower of Wisdom), woodcut,
German, second half of the fifteenth century. Nürnberg,
Germanisches Nationalmuseum H 63. Source: Wikimedia,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Turm
_der_Weisheit.jpg.

Bacon is here writing as a Franciscan interested in preaching as the

medieval inheritance of the rhetorical tradition of persuasion. But this line
of thinking about the moral force and imaginative impact of the poetic
books of Scripture increasingly required a procedural distinction to be
opened up between the methods of rhetoric and that of poetic. Rhetoric
relied on the Ciceronian/Quintilian emphasis on the orator as a good man
skilled in speech, where the presence of goodness offered some guarantee
of the morality of the discourse. But poetic texts did not work like that.
Theorists grappling with the poetic works of long dead writers of uncertain
morality and puzzlingly protean ethical stances soon realized that poets like
Ovid could not confidently be described as “good men.” So the moral
centre of gravity had to lie in the response of the reader rather than the
intention of the author. Poetic was both more powerful and more morally
dangerous than rhetoric, and its place in the scheme of moral philosophy
had to be argued for with some care. By the fourteenth century, John
Buridan (c. 1292–c. 1358), a philosopher at the university in Paris,
differentiated rhetoric and poetic from the other branches of “moral logic”
because in these two understanding is arrived at by the manipulation or
engagement of the passions. But Buridan was able further to distinguish
between rhetoric and poetic because of their different use of figurative
language. Rhetoric desires clear knowledge and deploys words in their
proper significations. Poetry, by contrast, proceeds by a delightful
obscuring of knowledge, the characteristic use of figurative language, and
by other means that engage the affections and stimulate the imaginations of
its audience. Fictiveness and figural language had long been seen as a
distinctive feature of poetry, as Lactantius had argued in his early fourth-
century definition of the function of the poet: elegantly and with oblique
figures, poets turned and transferred things that had really happened into
other representations. This commonplace definition of the function of poets
was tirelessly repeated by encyclopedists such as Isidore of Seville, Vincent
of Beauvais, and Pierre Bersuire. A careful and productive reading of pagan
texts always required acute sensitivity to their literary strategies, and an
understanding of the way they appealed through the senses to the
imagination and beyond, constituting a cognitive pathway parallel to the
processes of sensation and ethical discernment required in everyday life.
Horace’s Ars poetica (Ad pisonem) was still the backbone of medieval
poetic theory in Bacon’s lifetime. It provided the core vocabulary for
thinking about the special force of poetry, even when that thinking was
undertaken in terms increasingly colored by Aristotelian precept and
methodology. Common to medieval readings of Horace is the increasingly
explicit valuation of his focus on the impact and effect of a poem on the
responses of its hearers and readers: to be useful and to please. From 1250
onwards, poetic theory was an arena where Aristotelian readings of Horace
complemented and supplemented Horatian readings of Aristotle. Bacon
shares in this blending of these two traditions. In Part V of the Moralis
philosophia, in the course of a lengthy and careful anatomy of the different
strands of rhetoric, he talks about a special part of rhetoric which, he says,
Aristotle and other philosophers call “poetic” because poetic truths are used
in persuading men to the honesty of virtue. Bacon goes on to comment that
good poets all wish to produce good things and to delight by moving the
soul, whereas bad poets seek only to delight without producing moral good,
and such writers, like Ovid and writers similar to him, do not therefore
produce work conducive to honest morals. But he implicitly acknowledged
that poetry had a sensual and affective force that needed underpinning by a
moral purpose (Bacon 1953: 263, 255–6).
Teaching how to compose poetic arguments was the role and
responsibility of medieval arts of poetry, drawing heavily on the precepts of
classical rhetoricians. But the medieval arts are often more concerned with
advanced decorums of verbal technique in ornamentation and augmentation
than strategies of sensory and intellective engagement. Usually it is the
older theorists who think about the sensual impact of literature, its enargeia,
more radically and creatively (Schryvers 1983). Quintilian, for example, in
offering advice to orators and rhetoricians, had argued that “it is in the
power over the emotions that the life and soul of oratory is to be found”
(Institutio Oratoria 6.2.7). But he goes beyond the pragmatically rhetorical
rehearsal of the facts of the case to discuss the power of language to appeal
to many different senses and to stimulate the imagination to make things
absent appear as if present: “There are certain experiences which the Greeks
call ϕαντασίαι, and the Romans visions, whereby things absent are
presented to our imagination with such extreme vividness that they seem
actually to be before our very eyes” (6.2.29). These effects are, he argues, a
core part of literature’s enargeia (6.2.32). His discussion of verbal ornament
comments that “oratory fails of its full effect, and does not assert itself as it
should, if its appeal is merely to the hearing, and if the judge merely feels
that the facts on which he has to give his decision are being narrated to him,
and not displayed in their living truth to the eyes of the mind” (8.3.62), and
he offers powerful examples from Cicero and other classical authors to
demonstrate the way that language can engage the sensorium in a concerted
stimulation of the audience’s imagination (8.3.67–9).
Like Cicero and Quintilian, Bacon is interested in the psychological force
of poetry, and in the indirectness and the suddenness of an audience’s
response to poetic stimuli. His sophisticated and ambitious analysis of the
sensual force of poetic language developed out of his understanding that
speculative logic could have only a limited impact on moral behavior
because of its abstraction and difficulty, and because of the defects of
perception in humanity’s fallen nature (Rignani 2006). His influential
model of progressive perception and psychological sophistication is
outlined in his work on perspectival optics, where cognitive processes are
linked by analogy to the processes of spiritual growth (Bacon 1996;
Newhauser 2001, 2010):

Since [corporeal] vision is of three kinds—namely, by sense alone, by knowledge, and by

syllogism—it is likewise necessary for mankind to have a threefold [spiritual] vision. For by
sense alone we gain an insufficient grasp of a few things, such as light and colour; and this
cognition is weak, revealing whether these things exist and what they are. But by knowledge we
grasp what kind they are and what qualities they possess: whether the light of the sun or of the
moon, whether white or black. By syllogism we grasp everything associated with light and
colour according to all twenty common sensibles. Therefore, the first cognition is weak, the
second is more perfect, and the third is most perfect. So it is in spiritual vision: for what a man
knows by his own sense alone is very modest, since he lacks the other two kinds of cognition,
[the first of which is] through teachers, from youth to old age, for we can always learn from
those wiser than ourselves. And [if cognition is by sense alone] we are also without the third
kind of cognition, which occurs through divine illumination.
Perspectiva 3.3.2; Bacon 1996: 327–9

The moving of the audience’s soul is a distinctive difference between the

nature of an audience’s response to rhetoric and poetic. Bacon stresses the
engagement of the will and affections of the reader in a process of sensual
response leading to intellectual assessment and finally to moral judgment
and classification (Bacon 1897–1900, 1953; Massa 1955). Sublime and
decorous words have the power to carry away the soul to love the good and
detest the bad.
 In Bacon’s lifetime, the most influential Latin version of Aristotle’s
Poetics was Herman the German’s translation from the Arabic of Averroës’
(twelfth-century) Middle Commentary. Bacon gained much from the
Averroistic Poetics (Dahan 1980; Massa 1953). Because Aristotle had stated
that man naturally delights in representations, the process of what the Latin
Poetics call poetic assimilatio (likening) can produce pleasure, “for the
mind will more perfectly assimilate teachings as a result of the pleasure
which it takes in examples.” This is because the nature of the “imaginative
likening” constructed by the skilful poet invites the audience to test or assay
the comparison and to validate it against his own knowledge and experience
of real life: this is a key element in the distinctive power of poetic
discourse. Art must imitate nature. Herman’s Poetics translation operates in
a coherent and systematic way to present poetry as a didactic instrument,
operating on the sensitive, imaginative, and psychological responses of its
audience through its distinctive use of what Herman (following Avicenna
and Averroës of whom Bacon greatly approved) had called “the imaginative
syllogism leading to imaginative representation.” The different kinds of
representation explored by Herman/Averroës are different strategies of
affective engagement. As handmaids of the imagination, the senses have a
key role to play here (Black 1989, 2000; Gillespie 2005). As Bacon
understood, an imaginatively engaged reader is more likely to be able to
move from an affective connection to the higher levels of understanding
described by Grosseteste as affectus mentis.
Bacon’s model of the force of literature hinged on the creation of poetic
arguments or imaginative syllogisms, told using powerful words not by an
orator or a rhetor, as had been the case in Cicero, but by a new kind of
artist, which he calls a persuasor. That figure of the persuasor often looks
like an idealized Franciscan preacher, using examples, verses, imaginative
syllogisms, and powerful words to win the hearts of their audience. Indeed,
many of his ideas on optics were used by Peter of Limoges in his Oculus
moralis, a popular handbook for preachers (Peter of Limoges 2012). But
Bacon’s persuasor also anticipates by at least a century the complex
renegotiation of the role of the secular poeta as moral theologian
undertaken by Mussato, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salutati, and others.
The humanist exploration of the power of the imagination and the force of
literature owes much to the classicizing theories of Bacon’s generation of
schoolmen. Dante, drawing many of his ideas and much of his learning
from the late scholastic writings of Parisian masters and from the works of
his own master, Brunetto Latini, famously explores issues of psychology
and morality in his visionary allegory the Commedia, which displays a
highly sophisticated understanding and manipulation of the imaginative
interplay between the sensorium and intellection. In this creative
application of new academic, theological, and moral ideas of human
psychology Dante was typical of medieval poets in drawing inspiration for
his poetic trajectory more from scholastic philosophy and theology than
from the formal arts of poetry produced in the Middle Ages, which have
relatively little to say on the senses and their manipulation by rhetoric and
poetic.
The scholastic ideas soon spilled over into encyclopedias and topical
anthologies, which quickly circulated widely outside of schools and
universities as preachers and parish priests carried off their books into
parochial life or service in the secular courts and chanceries of Europe. The
most famous of these is the monumental Speculum of the Dominican
Vincent of Beauvais. But simpler reflections de naturis rerum (on the nature
of things), such as Alexander Neckham’s, see man’s five senses as part of
his imbrication in the four elements that make up the created world, and as
cognitive pathways that bring the elemental building blocks of creation into
contact with the inner wits and the higher senses of man’s immaterial soul
(De naturis rerum, cap. clii; Neckam 1863).
 FIGURE 7.4:Domenico di Michelino (1417–91), “The Comedy
Illuminating Florence,” showing Dante and the Divine
Comedy; fresco in the nave of the Duomo in Florence, 1465.
Source: Wikimedia,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Dante
_Domenico_di_Michelino_Duomo_Florence.jpg.

More popular and accessible is the De proprietiatibus rerum of

Franciscan Bartholomew the Englishman, compiled around 1230, and
translated into Middle English by John of Trevisa in 1398/9 (Bartholomew
the Englishman 1975–88). This eclectic text compiled whole treatises and
taxonomies of knowledge (for example, it incorporates verbatim
Grosseteste’s short academic treatises on color and light), and offered
opinionated and punchy dissertations on the bodily and ghostly senses, the
powers of the mind, the cells of the brain, and other physiological,
psychological, medical, and moral modelings (Woolgar 2006).
Bartholomew circles round the senses in several parts of his book,
approaching them from physical, psychological, moral, and theological
dimensions. In an extended discussion of the human voice, he ranges from
the physics of speech (in terms that recall Chaucer’s House of Fame; p.
211) to the legend of Orpheus. His discussion addresses the effects of voice
on its audience, starting to fringe on some of the contemporary ideas of the
affective and performative force of literature that we have already discussed
(p. 213). In his discussion of music, Bartholomew extends his thoughts on
voice to incorporate the metrical and rhythmical features of music, which of
course also inhere in literary verse (what Dante in the De Vulgari
Eloquentia calls rhetorical fiction set to poetry—Book 2; Mazzotta 1993).
Drawing on ancient biblical ideas of number, order, and harmony as the
exemplary traces of God’s design for the universe, the work’s final chapter
eulogizes the importance of the rhythmical and numerical order exemplified
by music as a fundamental tool for perceiving the transcendent glories of
God and for properly ordering the transient works of men (p. 1394). The
literary resonance of these comments, and their easy extension into the
realm of poetry and verse, is suggested not only by the way that
Bartholomew’s comments echo contemporary descriptions of the affective
force of the Psalms, recognized as among the most powerful of the “poetic”
books of the Bible, but also by the way that Richard de Fournival stresses
the multisensual force of voice and song in his discussion of bees in his
Bestiare d’Amours, where he speaks of his sensory and spiritual
enchantment by the voice of his beloved (Richard de Fournival 1986).
The power of hearing and sight to overcome Richard in wonder at his
lady’s beauty is reflected in other allegories of desire and delight, though
sometimes with more subversive and alarming consequences. The second
recension of Digulleville’s Pelerinage de la vie humaine adds a scene in
which the pilgrim receives an exposition of the Eucharist from his
interlocutor, Grace Dieu, whose name reveals that she is bringing revelatory
knowledge and understanding that transcend the normal sensory and
intellective abilities of the dreamer: “al thy wyttys in no wyse / Koude teche
the the guyse / of thys vnkouthe pryvyte” (all your senses could in no way
teach you the matter of this unknowable mystery) (Lydgate 1899–1904:
6285–6, John Lydgate’s early fifteenth-century verse translation). The
Eucharistic mystery of the Real Presence and Transubstantiation is so
beyond human comprehension, she tells him, that to understand it he must
have his eyes transposed into his ears. He balks at this, but Grace Dieu
reassures him that only by trusting his hearing can he come to understand
this transcendent mystery, which has flummoxed all his other senses (6297–
308). Proper understanding of this complex mystery can come only from
the surrender of the usual hierarchy of cognitive faculties (where sight is
often seen as the highest sense, physically and spiritually) to faithful
listening to and trusting in the word of God and the teaching of the Holy
Church. In this passage, Digulleville is almost certainly paraphrasing
Thomas Aquinas, whose hymn to the Eucharist, Adoro te devote, trumpets
the overthrow of the usual sensorium:

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,

Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.
(Sight, touch, and taste in Thee are each deceived; / The ear alone most safely is believed: / I
believe all the Son of God has spoken, / Than Truth’s own word there is no truer token; trans. E.
Caswell)

It is probably precisely this utopian idea of patient and unquestioning faith

that is being satirized in a much misunderstood passage in Dame Study’s
speech to Will in Piers Plowman for which Digulleville’s quest poem is an
important analogue and influence. Study, like Grace Dieu, is extolling the
need for faith and a limit to what the Cloud-author calls “curiosity of the
wits.” Using the proof text Non plus sapere quam oportet (Seek to
understand no more than is necessary), whose sapiential imagery also
gestures towards the sense of taste, Study argues against such over-
ingenious application of human speculation:

For all that wilneth to wyte the whyes of God almighty

I wolde his eye were in his ers, and his fynger after.
(For everyone who wants to know God Almighty’s reasons, I would that his eye were in his ass,
and then his finger) (Langland 2006: B.X.126–8)

Study, mimicking Grace Dieu, appears to be recommending a simple faith

in the word of God without further quizzical cavilling, followed by a refusal
to listen to idle theological speculation because (what might sound like) the
ear has been stopped by the finger, and the heart is content to obey the will
of God (B.X.132–3). The context of the passage aligns very closely with the
sense of both Aquinas and Digulleville, and with the import of the
immediately preceding Latin proof text. But, in a bawdily transgressive
inversion, Digulleville’s ear has become Langland’s buttocks: a hint that
Study’s pious recommendations are not likely to be satisfactory or
acceptable to the quizzical and restless Will and his even more quizzical
and restless author, even if the poem is also lampooning those who look
into “God’s privetees” by suggesting that they should interfere with their
own instead.
This passage is also a rebuke to the ambitious Will, who has been on the
verge of valorizing intellect and academic speculation above common
sense. While the model of patient fideism is clearly not acceptable to
Langland, the poem is moving towards a more subtle integration of the
inner and outer senses, and between sense and sensibility. Perhaps tellingly,
Study grounds the whole debate in this part of the poem as prolegomenon to
a rumination on the role of the Imagination as bridge between the senses
and the intellect. Once Will has been encouraged by Kynde (Nature) to
learn Kynde Witte (Natural Understanding) by observing the wonders of the
world through his senses (B.XI.321–3; XII.128–35), Ymaginatyf
(Imagination) draws a distinction between the natural knowledge derived
from the senses and that derived from intellection, while stressing that both
are functions of and vehicles for the grace of God (B.XII.64–8). Langland
reveals Imagination acting as the crucial synapse between sense data and
intellection, Kynde Witte and Clergie, which through his intervention need
to cooperate rather than be in competition with each other (B.XII.94–6).
Indeed, much later in the poem, Grace herself sanctifies the senses by
seeing them as weapons in the fight against evil (B.XIX.215–8).
Langland’s poem repeatedly teeters on the brink of full dress
personification allegory, but usually disrupts or pulls back from it after a
schematic passage begins to break down. His own eclectic and promiscuous
imagination constantly tries out different allegorical formulations, often, as
his scatological satire of Digulleville suggests, finding them wanting. But
such allegorical taxonomies had long been a useful way for poets and their
audiences to classify, analyze, and come to closer understanding of the
complex hierarchies of natural and moral philosophy, their subordination to
theology, and their relationship to and role in the search for Sapience. From
the works of Martianus Capella and the mythographic pictures and
architectural allegories of the Fulgentian tradition, though the neoplatonic
poems of Alan of Lille in the twelfth century to the ingenious
allegorizations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses by medieval commentators, such
texts sought to provide elaborate storage systems for the fundamentals of
philosophy and theology, and were in their turn pastiched and satirized by
poems like the Roman de la Rose and Chaucer’s House of Fame (Minnis
2005; Spearing 1993). Typically serio-comic is Jean de Meun’s account in
the Roman of the struggle between Art and Nature (16005–248), or his
discussion of dreams, visions, and the imagination (18274ff) (Badel 1980;
Huot 1993, 2010). Their discussions of rhetoric (the shorthand term for all
the verbal arts that often encompasses poetry as well as forensic pleading
and public oratory) as part of the Seven Liberal Arts, for example, often
provide a self-reflexive forum for reflection on the role of literature in
manipulating the senses and in provoking and controlling the imagination
and understanding of listeners and readers.
The Court of Sapience, an English poem dating probably from the reign
of Edward IV, which was printed and was an influence on later allegories
(Harvey 1984), is a highly enameled but incomplete account of the
allegorical dream odyssey of an indolent courtier, who is stimulated onto a
dream-state search for Wisdom by setbacks in his life. Drawing eclectically
from dictionaries and encyclopedias (especially Isidore and Bartholomew
the Englishman), moral treatises such as Bersuire’s Reductorium morale,
devotional handbooks (including the popular meditations on the life of
Christ attributed to Bonaventure), and popular allegories of the dispute and
final reconciliation of the Four Daughters of God, the poem offers an
overstuffed and sumptuously decorated cabinet of curiosities that is always
alert to the ways that its descriptions will impact on the senses and wits of
its audience. Whether describing the Four Daughters of God, the cardinal
virtues, or the beauty of the peacock’s tail, the stately progression of its
rime royal stanzas offers a highly ekphrastic tableau of delights (stanza
202). But underpinning this ornate display of erudition and brightly colored
verbal skill, the poem also has a clear conceptual model for the
interrelationship between the different modes of cognition and
understanding, expressed in the careful architecture of Sapience’s court,
where the dreamer passes through progressively tiered holding-pens of
gradually abstracting knowledge and understanding, populated by a
catalogue raisonné of scholars and writers. In the second court, for
example, presided over by Dame Intelligence, he finds a representation of a
richly painted heaven filled by the angelic hierarchies, with the pains of hell
suffered by Lucifer, the angel who fell from light to darkness and from joy
to suffering. This provokes a rumination on the need for the senses and wits
to give way when seeking knowledge and understanding of transcendent
truths:

Our wyttes [senses] fyve when they begyn to fayle

As in eche [each] invysyble creature
Intellygence must yeve [give] us then counsayle [advice]—
By her we have parfyte [perfect] knowledge and pure;
When eye, nose, ere [ear], mouthe, hand eke [also] is unsure,
And we by them may gete no pure scyence [knowledge]
Than must us renne [Then we must run] unto Intellygence.
(Stanza 244)

The ability of language to achieve a blurred multisensuality of sight, taste,

and hearing is carefully explored in the text: language is delicious, words
are ravishing, speech offers perfect sustenance, utterances are clear and
perfectly illuminated (stanzas 271–2). The authors praised for their “metres
… in good array” are the pantheon of classical poets, with the addition of
two medieval mythographers who wrote similarly elaborate ekphrastic
allegories, Alan of Lille and Bernardus Silvestris.
The Court of Sapience is quite traditional in its structure and in much of
what it says about rhetoric and the other liberal arts, not least because it is
so promiscuously eclectic from other, much older, medieval taxonomies of
knowledge. Perhaps surprisingly, it shows no interest in humanist theories
of rhetoric and poetic, which had fuelled the great renaissance of poetic
theory and practice in fourteenth-century Italy, and which were already
showing themselves in England at the start of the fifteenth century in the
poetic ideology of John Lydgate, which owes far more to Petrarch and
Boccaccio than it does to Chaucer. For the humanists, poets were
theologians, and they described themselves as prophetic seers (Greenfield
1981; Trinkaus 1979; Witt 1977).
 The humanist view of the particular force of poetic language is given
heightened attention, and the recognition of the multisensual potential of the
language arts receives a final burnishing in the last great English allegory of
its kind, Stephen Hawes’s early sixteenth-century The Pastyme of Pleasure
(Hawes 1928). Hawes’s poem brings together the attention to cognitive
modeling and the interest in the distinctive work of poetic modes found in
the twelfth- and thirteenth-century works with which we began, but adds to
it a flair and delight in the status of the author which comes from the Italian
humanist reinscription of the poet as hero and seer, especially after
Petrarch’s laureation in 1341 (Gillespie 1997). This synthesis culminates
with ritual praise of England’s “three crowns” (Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate)
who stand as guarantors of an English poetic tradition in the same way that
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio validate that country’s cultural capital and
literary prowess (Ebin 1988). In Hawes’s allegory, the hero, Graunde
Amour, is on a journey to the Tower of Doctrine, in the course of which
many enameled and illuminated tableaux are unveiled to his astonished
eyes, and he undergoes a sentimental education.
The exposition of Rhetoric in this work is unusually detailed (Copeland
1992). Decked with the garland of laurel that marked out the undying fame
of poets, she occupies a chamber in the Tower of Doctine that is strewn
with flowers, decorated with mirrors (660), and so beautifully perfumed
that it is considered celestial (663–5). But this is not hubristic overreaching
on Rhetoric’s part, for this multisensual chamber is home to an art that
gives access to the highest forms of knowledge. Like the humanist poet-
theologians, Hawes’s Rhetoric is inspired by heaven (669), and Graunde
Amour asks to be infused with dew, for his tongue to be painted with the
flowers of rhetoric, and for his dull mind to be illuminated by the golden
beams of inspiration. In describing Rhetoric, Hawes follows closely the
standard model of cognitive processing established in the thirteenth century:
the senses providing sense data for the common wit, after which
imagination gets to work on the sense data and transforms them into
phantasms, before the processes pass on to the estimative part of the mind
and finally to the memory. But here Hawes is not using this familiar
cognitive schema as the framework for his discussion of the general
processing of sense data and the shift from sensibilia to intelligibilia.
Rather he is exploring the highly specialized mental processes of the poet,
as he maps out the trajectory and planned impacts of his composition. So,
for Hawes, a well-found poem succeeds and is deserving of praise and
memorialization precisely because it effectively and deliberately maps itself
onto the cognitive highway of mankind, which is why he is able to move at
the end of the section to a defence of poets and their work that closely
reflects the claims for value, worth, and truth made by Petrarch and his
contemporaries and humanist successors, and also recalls the claims for the
power of poetic made by Roger Bacon. Like Petrarch and Lydgate (but
unlike Chaucer), Hawes’s poet is a hero because he deliberately and
deliberatively works to distill and precipitate out his imaginings into
effective (and affective) poetic form through the alchemy of his art and skill
(729–35).
When, much later in the work, Hawes returns to describe the five inward
wits, it is immediately obvious that he has modeled his earlier account of
the five parts of rhetoric so that they imitated and simulated the accepted
model of human cognition: from the five senses to the common sense; from
there progressively to imagination, fantasy, estimation, and finally to
memory (2787–93). In other words, poetry works so powerfully because it
precisely targets all the main sense organs and cognitive functions of the
human body, and recognizes the cascading impact that such cognitive
processes have on the understanding. Hawes makes the parallels
programmatically explicit, but they had been implicit in most medieval
thinking about literary theory, and, indeed, in most literary uses of the
sensorium. It is a case of knowing where to look for them, and of being able
to grope towards them, listen for them, smell them out, before enjoying the
sapiential taste of understanding what is going on. The transit from
sensuality to contemplative abstraction, from gross matter to ineffable spirit
is not only the itinerary of theology, but also of poetry in its most serious
and ambitious guise. “The alphabet of pathology is engraved on parchment”
(Serres 2008).
 CHAPTER EIGHT
_____________________________________

Art and the Senses:

Art and Liturgy in the
Middle Ages
ERIC PALAZZO

The earliest involvement of medieval art historians in sensology was to

examine the different modalities of the iconographic translation of the five
senses in medieval art. Carl Nordenfalk (1976) explored various aspects of
the symbolic representations of the five senses in the iconography of a
broad period from the early Middle Ages and the fifteenth century, even
offering extensions into the modern era, focusing his interest on the
allegorical meaning of the iconography of the five senses, as, for instance,
in the five tapestries of “La dame à la licorne” at the Musée de Cluny in
Paris. Some authors have described different aspects of the iconography of
the senses in medieval art, mostly based on allegories of the virtues and
vices (Lupant 2010; Nordenfalk 1976; Quiviger 2010), while Elizabeth
Sears (1991) has examined how the expression of the auditory dimension in
the text of the Psalter grounds its visual translation in iconography. More
recently, historians and art historians have become interested in medieval
liturgical objects and their materiality, considering in particular the question
of their activation during the performance of the liturgy and what this
activation allows in terms of a practicing theology. Among others, the work
of Herbert Kessler (2004) opened the way for a new approach to the
materiality of medieval art as well as to the visual implications of the
development of mirrors (2011). In Byzantine art, Bissera Pentcheva (2010)
has begun to reassess the active dimension of icons in the liturgy. She has
demonstrated the effective role played by those liturgical and devotional
objects within the ritual because of a materiality that has to do, by its
nature, with the divine. Carolyn Bynum (2011), meanwhile, has developed
a new conception of materiality applied to objects of worship in the later
Middle Ages, especially in connection with reliquaries, emphasizing that
the presence of certain objects in the liturgy gave theological concepts
related to the meaning of the ritual an actual presence.
The approach to art and the medieval senses can also emphasize the
central place occupied by the five senses in Christian liturgy and its
theological significance (Palazzo 2012a). In this way, liturgical objects are
considered essential elements of the ritual; their primary purpose is to be
activated by the five senses during the liturgical performance so that the
various aspects of their theological meaning can be realized. This approach
moves away from a strictly “functionalist” conception of art in the liturgy
without rejecting the different political, social, and cultural meanings
liturgical objects carried, particularly through the iconography of the images
they contain. The clearest examples of these objects are liturgical books and
their illustrations, like the famous Godescalc Evangelistary (Paris, BnF MS
n.a. lat. 1203) and the liturgical Libellus of Charles the Bald (Paris, BnF MS
lat. 1141), which become truly embodied at the time of their use in the
ritual, for this is the message they convey through the activation of their
sensory materiality (Palazzo 2010a, b, c, d; 2012a, b, c).
In the decoration of the Godescalc manuscript, the specific combination
of gold and purple refers concretely to both ideological and theological
dimensions of the sensorial activation of the manuscript itself. Godescalc—
the author of the poem written at the end of the manuscript and, perhaps,
the artist of the illustrations also—explains that the combination of those
two colors in the ornamental decoration of the manuscript refers to the
authority of the king as successor of the Roman emperor. At the same time,
by saying that purple is the red color of Jesus’s blood while gold means his
glory in heaven after his resurrection, Godescalc points to the core of the
theological and sacramental meaning of the Eucharist which is to be
activated through the sensorial dimension of the manuscript. In the different
phases of liturgical rituals, not only the mass but also liturgical drama,
many objects are in high demand by an almost permanent sensory
activation—including the books, chalice, paten, or even the thurible, while
others—such as liturgical combs—are activated only infrequently. This
infrequent activation of certain sensory and ritual objects does not detract
from the activation of their theological significance during the liturgy at the
appropriate time in their “proper place” of liturgical performance, in a
process similar to the way liturgical songs have been seen to “capture
sound.”

FIGURE Godescalc Evangelistary (c. 781–3): The

8.1:
Fountain of Life . Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
MS n. a. lat. 1203, fol. 3v. Source: Wikimedia,
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fountain.Of.Life.Godescal
c.jpg.

It is in this fashion that one must understand and interpret the insertion of
liturgical “drama” or “plays” within certain Christian liturgical rites in the
Middle Ages. In particular, those relating to the Eucharist are not “plays” in
the form of liturgical theater, but rather they perform an action which refers
to the life of Christ and is designed to “make present” the scene in the
ritual. In that sense, the unfolding of the liturgy of the mass, more than
other Christian rites during antiquity and the Middle Ages, is entirely
founded on the sensory performative precision of actors using objects,
images, gestures, and movement within a very particular space. In
particular, from the Carolingian era and the work of such theologians as
Amalarius of Metz (d. c. 850), the exegesis of the liturgy presented an
interpretive reading of the principal rites of the Church, based on the idea of
the activation of the senses which makes possible the transition between the
invisible and the visible. For the commentators on medieval liturgy, such as
Amalarius, Jean Beleth (fl. 1135–82), Rupert of Deutz (c. 1075–1129),
Sicard of Cremona (1155–1215), and above all William Durand in the
thirteenth century, all the elements in the ritual—actors, objects, places,
liturgical music, clothing—carry a symbolic signification. This signification
bears a direct relation to the biblical reading during the mass and its
theological meaning and these elements are activated by the senses in the
performance of the ritual. For exegetes of the liturgy, it is a matter of
inscribing the ritual of the mass within the “historical” continuity of the
rituals of the Old Testament, in order to contribute to the concurrence
between the Old and New Testaments. Thus, one must recall the importance
that the exegetes accord to the construction of a theology of the liturgy in
the rituals of the mass, in particular, where a symbolic interpretation
imposes itself that emphasizes the idea of the liturgy as nothing other than
the re-presentation of a sacramental reality.
In the field of monumental art, there are many examples of sensory
activation of the images painted and carved in more or less direct
connection with the performance of the liturgy. In both cases, activation of
sight is as crucial as that of touch. This is mainly due to the permanent
character of the place of monumental images in the most significant setting
of the liturgy: the church. One can also rely on the fact that sculpture and, to
a lesser extent, monumental painting, appeal to the senses through their
materiality (Jung 2010), and they do so specifically by the emphasis on
forms for sculpture and color for monumental painting. For monumental
painting, a good example of sensory activation through sight and, in some
ways, touch, is provided by the report of an image, now lost, at the
monastery of Reichenau in the tenth century. In the Gesta Witigonis written
in honor of the abbot Witigowo, a monk-poet named Purchart says that the
“monks liked with their prayers and their eyes the fresco depicting the
Virgin and Child” (Sansterre 1995). This passage, with a strong literary and
poetic component, describes the sense of sight and touch through the
prayers from the monks’ eyes, thus allowing a symbolic activation of the
monumental image in the course of a devotional ritual.
Among the best examples of sensory activation during liturgical
devotional practice are the activation of crucifixes and statues of the Virgin
and Child caused by the intensity of prayer. This is reported, for example, in
the life of Sainte-Maure of Troyes written by Prudentius of Troyes in the
ninth century, though some authors still doubt the text’s authenticity (Castes
1990). Prudentius relates that after hours of the saint’s intense prayer, a
crucifix and a statue of the Virgin and Child came to life with sensory
effects such as cries emitted by Christ on the cross or even related to touch
when the Lord offered his scepter to the saint. A demonstration of a similar
sensory activation through a sculpture is found in a vision related by Rupert
of Deutz (Boespflug 1997) where, as a result of Rupert’s intense devotional
practice, the face of Christ on a crucifix bowed in a marvelous way. Rupert
says that the brightness of Jesus’ eyes meant that he accepted the kisses
given by Rupert, activating at one and the same time the sense of touch and
taste. Following this, the author says that the flavor of Christ remained in
his mouth, making him think of Psalm 33:9 where it is specified that the
Lord is sweet (Carruthers 2006; Fulton 2006).
Such stories attest to the importance attached to sculpture as a trigger for
sensory activation. In the second half of the Middle Ages, sculptures were
increasingly created for the sense of touch, particularly in the practice of
liturgical drama. For example, the fixity of sight of the famous sculpture of
Sainte-Foy of Conques produced a very strong effect on the pilgrims who
made their devotion in front of it. Peter K. Klein (1990) has suggested that
monumental sculptures of the Romanesque period could have produced a
real effect on the spectator, activating internal emotion through the sense of
sight. This was certainly the case with the famous Romanesque sculpture at
Silos representing the pilgrims of Emmaüs and Thomas touching Christ
after his resurrection (Valdez del Alamo 2007; Werckmeister 1990) or,
perhaps, with the nude figures represented at Moissac, at the entrance of the
church (Dale 2011).
I will now present two case studies and suggest new readings of the
iconography of a famous Carolingian ivory and of two paintings of a
charter produced at the end of the twelfth century. All of these will involve
elements within the “Visible” and others belonging to the category of the
“Invisible.” In the new reading of these images and objects, the special
relationship between their materiality and the senses is taken into account to
propose a fundamentally theological interpretation of the iconography
depicted in the images or of the objects themselves which has to be
activated through the senses during the performance of a ritual where
everything seems based on the expression of different forms of the
Incarnation of the Verbum through the sacramental nature of the Eucharist.
In the iconography of the Carolingian ivory preserved in Frankfurt one
sees both the liturgical authority of Gregory the Great as author of the
Gregorian sacramentary and a liturgical moment of the mass. The ivory
demonstrates the sensory dimension of this ritual and its iconographic
expression. Indeed, we see clearly the celebrants in the lower level
represented with their mouths open. An open mouth in medieval
iconography in general, and in the liturgical scenes in particular, was not
common and does not necessarily suggest the execution of a song. The
liturgical context of the scene can nevertheless suggest that those officiating
in the foreground are singing the Sanctus. Though we do not hear the
singers performing the song, one can say that viewing the image activates
the sound dimension suggested by the open mouths of the schola cantorum.
Here, the auditory sense created by the singing of the Sanctus is activated
by another sense, sight. It is clear that it is the activation of the sensory view
of the celebrant during the course of the ritual that generated the spiritual
dimension of the liturgy, i.e., the theology of the Eucharist. Nor is this
surprising since theologians argued that the perception of the sacramental
transformation involving the “real” human presence of the body of Christ
during the liturgy of the mass takes place mainly through the power of
sight, considered here as the visual sense and the ability of humanity to turn
this into inner spiritual vision. For a variety of reasons, the eye and vision
are regarded by theologians as the organ and the sense that, first, allow the
activation of the other senses and, second, that have the power in the liturgy
to make visible the invisible, that is to say to “see” the heart of sacramental
theology and its signum. Thus, the ivory’s “invisible” iconography and its
multiple theological meanings are activated by the sight of the celebrant
when performing the ritual, making possible the revelation of the theology
of the Eucharist, by nature invisible. The “invisible” iconography of the
image is based on the visible elements themselves, which in their
iconographic arrangement suggest the invisibility of the themes and the
involvement of their theological meanings.
 FIGURE 8.2: Carolingian ivory (end of the tenth century).
Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek MS Barth 181,
Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt a.M. Used by
permission.

In the course of the liturgy of the mass, the execution of the Sanctus by
the schola follows the introductory preface to the Canon of the mass which
should allow the consecration of the hosts and the wine. At this precise
moment in the ritual of the Eucharist, the two “images” or theological
themes raised by the priest through the liturgical texts and “really” present
in the “locus” of the celebration are the Maiestas Domini and the
crucifixion. The death of Christ on the cross is indeed one of the key themes
of the liturgy of the mass that justified the illustration in the sacramentaries
and missals from the eleventh century, representing the crucifixion attached
to the prayer of the “Te igitur” which quickly became indispensable to the
iconographic cycle of the liturgical book of the celebrant. In the Carolingian
period, the theme of Christ crucified was the heart of the exegesis prepared
by theologians on the resurrection and, more broadly, on eschatology. Using
the text of the Canon of the mass and especially the opening prayer, the “Te
igitur,” many medieval theologians argued that the representation of the
crucified Christ attached to the letter “T” was practically the “real” image
of the passion of Christ, making it possible for the priest, celebrating with
the manuscript containing the image of the crucifixion Te igitur, to see and
contemplate the crucifixion in reality with the eyes of the heart.
The image of the ivory does not show the crucifixion, but its presence is
evoked iconographically. First, we must remember that the text of the “Te
igitur,” of which we can read the first words on the opened Sacramentary on
the altar, is for theologians an evocation of the crucifixion. Furthermore, the
crucifixion is suggested by the altar itself which is, following Amalarius of
Metz (1950), an image of the cross. Second, the two angels on the ciborium,
normally located above the altar, should also be seen in relation to the
theme of crucifixion. Indeed, these angels are very similar to the angels we
can see on the ivories of Metz produced around 1000 CE that represent the
theme of the crucifixion (Palazzo 2012c). In his Liber officialis, Amalarius
of Metz (1950) stressed the importance of the sacramental invisibility
which has to be activated through the heart of the celebrant at the
commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the very moment of
the Eucharist. Amalarius supported his argument by adopting material from
Augustine’s City of God, although of course the Frankfurt ivory cannot be
considered a simple translation of Augustine’s thought.
In addition to the cross and the crucifixion, the iconography of our ivory
also suggests the “invisible” representation of the Maiestas Domini. The
connection between the Maiestas Domini and the liturgy is justified by the
mention of the Lord’s majesty in the second part of the text of the preface
“Vere Dignum” adapted from the vision of Isaiah (6:1–6). We saw earlier
that in the Frankfurt ivory, the singers were probably singing the Sanctus,
which ends the preface and marks the transition to the prayers of the Canon.
Beyond the obvious link between the theme of the Maiestas Domini
mentioned in the preface, Herbert Kessler (2004) has rightly pointed out
that the presence of the Maiestas Domini and the crucifixion attached to the
prayer “Te igitur” in some sacramentaries emphasizes the visual affirmation
of the dual nature of Christ at the moment of the ritual of consecration.
In terms of the role played by the angels in the consecration, it is
important to recall that in one of the prayers of the Canon of the mass, the
Lord asks an angel to bring the offerings on his altar. The liturgical role of
the angels set out in this prayer is another justification for the presence of
two angels on the image of our ivory. These angels are also involved in the
offering of the sacrifice of the Eucharist celebrated by the priest, who
becomes an image of Christ. The angels on the ciborium suggest the idea of
Maiestas Domini mainly because of the reference to the text of the preface
of the Canon of the mass. But here, Christ in Majesty is invisible though
“present” in other forms, such as the figure of the priest and the
representation of the altar which are, according to medieval exegesis,
associated with Christ. Most of all, however, Christ is present in the form of
the Eucharistic species placed on the altar and prepared for consecration. To
support this hypothesis, we can also draw parallels to our picture from the
painting in the Sacramentary of Saint-Denis from the mid-eleventh century
(Paris, BnF MS lat. 9436, fol. 15v) which shows, connected with the Canon
of the mass, the Domini Maiestas surrounded by angels and seraphim and,
appearing in the lower part of the image, a chapel with an altar surmounted
by a cross. The miniature of the Sacramentary of Saint-Denis attests to the
possible connection between the representation of the Domini Maiestas and
that of an altar in the context of the Canon of the mass. The iconographic
formula of the Frankfurt ivory expresses the same idea concerning the close
relationship between the Maiestas Domini and the altar.
Some elements of the iconographic formula developed on the Frankfurt
ivory suggest this connection even more strongly. For example, the circular
arrangement of the celebrants is very close to what we see in several images
representing the Carolingian ruler enthroned and surrounded by clerics and
soldiers. Here, even if the circle of singers at the time of the execution of
the Sanctus is perhaps the result of the visual translation of the description
of the Ordo of the mass, I see here also a willingness to suggest an invisible
Maiestas Domini and to express the parallel between the adoration of the
Carolingian ruler and Christ, as a kind of theophany. If one accepts the
possibility that the iconography of the ivory, in addition to being a liturgical
representation, is also a complex suggestion of the crucifixion and the
Maiestas Domini, this explains the position of the celebrant facing the
people, which contradicts liturgical performance and the need for the
celebrant to stand versus ad populum (with his back to the congregation).
Indeed, the representation of the Maiestas Domini makes possible the
contemplation of the face of the Lord in his glory by the viewer. And it is
this position which is adopted for the priest celebrating in the Frankfurt
ivory, suggesting and making real the similarity between the priest
celebrating and the Maiestas Domini and the visibility of theophany during
the consecration of the mass.
Thus, the meaning of the Frankfurt ivory goes beyond the historical
message centered on the representation of Gregory the Great as a liturgical
authority in an attempt to support the Carolingian reform of the liturgy. It is
a remarkable testimony to the richness of visual discourse concerning the
liturgy and theology. On the Frankfurt ivory, theological discourse, centered
on the Eucharist, takes a very sophisticated form. In this exceptional image,
Christ is represented in multiple ways but especially in the form of the
Eucharistic species that the priest is consecrating and, in some ways, in the
book which was, for many early medieval theologians, another image of
Christ. One can note, as well, that the chalice and paten are placed between
the opened book—the sacramentary—and a closed one (which cannot be
interpreted as a copy of the Gospels). This visual play between the two
books, framing the Eucharistic species—i.e., Christ—demonstrates the
interest of the artist to “show” the idea of revelation. In other words, the
closed book on the altar has to be understood, I think, in relation to the
theme of revelation made possible thanks to the Eucharist and the
consecrated species, as well as a complementary book near the
sacramentary opened at the page of the “Te igitur” which makes real the
theophanic revelation by the words it contains.
The image of the Frankfurt ivory demonstrates revelation made “visible”
through the Eucharist and made “real” through the sensory activation of the
celebrant. Here, the activation of the sight of the celebrant at the moment of
the ritual stimulates the other senses to complete the liturgy, including the
sound that is implied in the liturgical song performed by the singers. The
image is itself a perpetual theophany, in particular through the activation of
the sensory realm during the performance of the ritual, so that it functions
as a sort of permanent anticipation, and incarnation, of the moment of
revelation made in the liturgy of the mass.
The cartulary of the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou
(Canigó, Catalonia), a single sheet measuring 49 cm × 20 cm, is kept in the
library of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where it is MS 38 in the Jean
Masson collection. It is not known if it was originally a single sheet or if it
comes from a full cartulary in which it would have been the first page. At
the top of the sheet is a two-part illumination; under it is a charter
concerning a pious confraternity founded in honor of Saint Martin, principal
saint of the monastery of Canigou, on Easter Sunday of the year 1195.
Patricia Stirnemann (1993) dated the document to around 1200. The
brotherhood mentioned in the charter is made up of religious and laypeople
who care to maintain, at their expense, an oil lamp burning day and night
before the altar. On the day of the feast of Saint Martin, the brothers will
give two pence for the illumination of the church. Other obligations in the
charter specify that the priest in charge of the chapel—we will see that the
identification of the capella is not without problems—celebrates a mass
every week for the repose of the souls of the deceased brothers and the
salvation of those still living. This mass will be celebrated on the altar of
the church—ecclesia in the text—which may not be identical with the
capella mentioned earlier. The text of the charter also states that the
brothers may request to be buried in the cemetery of the abbey and that
other members of the confraternity will attend their funerals.
 FIGURE 8.3: Cartulary of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou. Paris,
Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Collection Masson
MS 38 (c. 1200). Used by permission.

The presentation of the illustrated charter demonstrates the complexity

and richness in expressing the sensory dimension of liturgical iconography
in a manuscript that was not liturgical by nature. The illuminations are
divided into two registers: The Domini Maiestas in the upper register shows
Christ sitting on his throne, blessing with his right hand and holding his
book. He is in a circular mandorla with a blue background and stars. The
mandorla is placed in the center of a composition comprising four
compartments of red or brown containing the symbols of the Evangelists.
On both sides of the Maiestas we can see the monumental figures of the
Virgin and Saint Martin. Their gestures are identical: each points to a scene
in the lower register of the painting with one hand, while the other hand
presents the figure of Christ. The ritual depicted in the lower register also
stands against a background of colored bands that allow one to establish a
formal and ornamental link between the two images: in the upper register, a
theophany, and at the feet of Jesus a moment of liturgical celebration. In
describing the scene, Stirnemann indicates that we are dealing with a
representation of the mass in a church, showing the moment of the use of
incense by a priest facing an altar set against a wall, surmounted by a sort of
dome, behind which is perhaps the church tower of Saint Martin of
Canigou. The localization of the scene might be the chapel of Saint Martin
of Canigou, as Leroquais suggested, or the lower church of the Catalan
monastery from the early eleventh century. However, the accuracy of the
archaeological image of the cartulary is not such that we should necessarily
imagine it as the liturgical representation of a scene taking place in the
lower church of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou, especially since, in the text of
the charter, the evocation of a chapel and a church at the same time is
problematic. According to Leroquais and Stirnemann, the priest is censing
the offerings placed on the altar, where we also see a chalice, a host (or
stylized paten?), and a cross. Behind the celebrant in what appears to be a
nave we can see a group of seven women and men. They all look towards
the scene that takes place near the altar, some of them gesturing in that
direction. At the head of this group of people is a woman with veiled hands
whose attitude suggests that she is kneeling. Between the kneeling woman
and the column that separates the choir from the nave one sees two candles
suspended by chains. Above the right-most figure we can see two bells. The
details that characterize this liturgical representation include curtains
suspended above the altar and along the nave. The form taken by the
curtains of the dome suggests that they may have been opened.
In her analysis of these paintings, Stirnemann stressed the importance of
some details directly related to the charter: the presence of the hanging
lamps and the bells. The use of the latter may have to do with the liturgy of
remembering deceased brothers, while the presence of the laity in the nave
may be related to the obligation to maintain a light in the church. Rightly,
Stirnemann points out the importance accorded to women in this group,
although the text of the charter makes no mention of women in the
confraternity. She speculates that it could be consecrated women—the nuns
—who were in charge of manufacturing hosts for the celebration of the
Eucharist. If the scene is taken to depict the moment of censing the
offerings and the altar, then one could understand the gesture of the
woman’s veiled hands as a reminder of the offertory rite, just before the
consecration of the Eucharist. In one sense this is correct, but as I have
demonstrated elsewhere such scenes are most often a pretext to show
something other than only a very specific moment of the liturgy. In her
study of these images, Stirnemann was also right to stress the importance of
realia in their iconography not only because the role of candles in the
foundation of the Brotherhood is mentioned in the charter, but also because
of the likely importance of the iconography of the upper register on an
antependium which perhaps once decorated the choir of the church of Saint
Martin of Canigou.
Let us now see how the senses are stimulated in the staging of the image
of the lower register to activate the sensory dimension of the ritual and to
fulfill a truly theological purpose, visible in the painting of the upper
register through the theophany. As noted earlier, the image is not necessarily
a “real” representation of the mass or one specific moment of the mass,
even though it is important that concrete elements of the liturgy are
included here. Of the five senses, those of hearing, smell, and sight are
foregrounded through various details. In this regard, I would point out that
the scene synthesizes several moments or aspects of celebrating the mass.
To understand the way three of the five senses of the viewer are appealed
to, one can first observe that the gesture of censing activates the olfactory
sense. That part of the iconography is not directly connected to the charter,
which rather emphasizes light and sound. Sight is also activated by different
motives and iconographic details, such as the eyes of those in the church, or
even by the curtains on the ciborium and along the nave, which perhaps
played a role in “seeing” the liturgy and the sacramental effect of a vision
being revealed. The artist has clearly intended to emphasize the sensory
dimension of the ritual and the need for the activation of the senses to
achieve its sacramental effects. One can also note that there is a balance
between sensory hearing, smell, and sight to represent the multisensory
dimension of the liturgy. It is precisely because of the multisensory effect
sought by the painter in the construction of the iconographic image that it
seems futile to try to determine which precise moment is represented in the
liturgy. The artist seems to have been more interested in the gesture of
censing and its active sensory dimension to create a sacramental effect in
relation to the activation of the other senses—namely, hearing and seeing—
that interact to produce the multisensory effect of the liturgy.
We cannot say with certainty if the priest in front of the altar is censing
the offerings before the consecration, as suggested by the woman shown
kneeling and with veiled hands, which is perhaps a visual reference to the
offertory rite. In the Roman mass, the censing of the altar is done by the
priest after the offertory, the deacon continues that gesture, and then censes
the priest. This reinforces the idea that the ritual in the image is not intended
as a faithful reproduction of a specific moment of celebration. In our image,
the incense and the thurible are carried by the priest and not the deacon,
suggesting a closer relationship with the theology of the Eucharist and
exegesis of the incense and its use in the mass. In liturgical images of the
early Middle Ages, when painters represented the priest facing the altar,
they were generally representing the moment of consecration. However, in
our image this is not the case, and in fact the gesture of censing is a
common representation of the angels in the Domini Maiestas motif.
In medieval liturgical exegesis, from Amalarius of Metz (1950), in his
Liber officialis (ninth century), to William Durand, in his Rationale
divinorum officiorum (thirteenth century), the thurible is a symbolic figure
of Christ. I consider the iconography of the priest censing the altar and the
offerings in the lower register as the representation of what is “veiled,” but
yet to be “revealed” through the liturgy: it is, namely, the equivalent of the
angel with the thurible described at the opening of the seventh seal in
Apocalypse 8:3. One can observe parallels between Apocalypse 8:3 and
6:9–11 in exegetical literature. They support the view that the angel with the
thurible of Apocalypse 8, considered by scholars as a figure of Christ
raising his own fragrance to God, can also be seen as Christ censing the
altar with the souls of martyrs in Apocalypse 6. Although the image of Saint
Martin of Canigou does not, strictly speaking, represent scenes of the
Apocalypse, I would still suggest that the figure of the priest censing the
altar is a compressed allusion to the angels in Apocalypse 6 and 8. As the
priest censing in front of the altar is above all a figure of Christ, one can say
that in the charter the good smell of the incense in Christ’s thurible climbs
to the figure of the Maiestas Domini located in the upper register. To
support this statement, it must also be remembered that in exegesis from the
twelfth century on, the angel of Apocalypse 8:3 is interpreted in relation to
the figure of the angel of sacrifice mentioned in the prayer Supplices te
rogamus (we humbly beg you) in the canon of the mass that puts the theme
of the angel with the thurible in the context of the liturgical celebration of
the Eucharist, as is also the case with the image of Saint Martin of Canigou.
In support of this assertion, I should also mention the importance of Psalm
140:2: “Let my prayer be directed as incense in your sight, and my hands
lifted as an evening sacrifice,” the liturgical uses of which are well known.
All of the factors of exegesis mentioned already make it clear that the good
smell of the incense at the moment of the gesture of censing and the
activation of the sense of smell have the power to create the vision of the
Maiestas Domini and its theophanic meaning.
In the field of Psalter illustrations, we can compare the painting of the
cartulary of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou (Figure 8.3) and the one found on
folio IIv of Bibliothèque nationale de France MS lat. 2508, produced in the
twelfth century in Italy and containing Odo of Asti’s commentary on the
Psalms (Figure 8.4). In this frontispiece, we can see the presence of the
Maiestas Domini and, in the lower register, the figure of David, but more
interesting for our purposes are Aaron (or Moses) and Melchizedek censing
an altar.
The proximity of the iconographic formula in both images is obvious. In
both cases, the lower part of the composition shows the gesture of censing
the altar—the priest as a figure of Christ in the case of the Catalan cartulary
and two figures of high priests from the Old Testament in the Psalm
commentary— and its proximity with the Maiestas Domini that is located,
in both cases, at the top of the image, as if to visually suggest the meaning
of Psalm 140:2. It seems clear that the painters of this iconographic formula
wanted to emphasize the effect produced by the theological use of incense
and its sensory activation in the liturgy of the Eucharist, that is to say, as a
factor leading to a real vision of theophany, i.e., the Maiestas Domini.
 FIGURE 8.4: Psalter of Odo of Asti. Paris, Bibliothèque
nationale de France MS lat. 2508, fol. IIv (twelfth century).
Used by permission.

Further support of this hypothesis can be found in a passage of the

Dialogues by Gregory the Great, where the aroma associated with an altar
is directly related to the vision of a theophany. Here, Gregory describes the
events that occurred in connection with the dedication of a church on the
Quirinal. While the congregation was celebrating the liturgy in honor of the
Lord, the church was desecrated by the presence of a pig and its repulsive
smell. But God purified the sacred place in a demonstration of the good
smell of the theophany. As Gregory explains:

A few days later, in a perfectly serene sky, a cloud came down from heaven on the altar of this
church, covering the altar as if with a veil, and filled the whole church with an atmosphere of
terror so great and a perfume so sweet that although the doors were open, no one dared to enter,
and the priest and guardians, and those who came to celebrate mass, saw the thing but could not
enter, and they breathed in the sweetness of the wonderful perfume.
Dialogues 3.30

Even if this text does not explicitly mention the theophany, there can be no
doubt in my opinion that the cloud descending from heaven onto the altar is
a theophany, and it purifies the church by its sweet aroma. Extrapolating,
one can now connect the Maiestas Domini with a fragrance whose origin is
both divine and connected with the incense in the liturgy of the mass.
Taking into account the association between Christ and the incense, on the
one hand, and Christ and the priest, on the other hand, we can understand
the vision of theophanic Maiestas Domini revealed in the ritual of the mass,
including the gesture of censing the altar by the priest, as a sort of
anticipation of the moment of consecration, which will show the real
presence of Christ in the two species. This idea is not only suggested but
rather shown in the double composition of the painting of the cartulary of
Saint-Martin-du-Canigou.
Let us, finally, describe a last aspect of the study of the iconography of
the painting of the Canigou cartulary: Saint Martin’s presence with Christ in
the theophany in the upper register and its possible involvement in the
liturgical-theological theme developed in the iconography of the lower
register in relation to the sensory activation of the incense and its
multisensory relationship with other senses such as hearing and sight. The
representation of Saint Martin to the left of the mandorla is justified by the
dedication of the Catalan monastery to Martin, as well as by the mention in
the charter of the celebration of a mass in honor of this saint, on the
occasion of which the brothers should illuminate the church. But perhaps
there are further links between Saint Martin and the theme of the fragrance
which is created in the liturgy by activating the olfactory sense through the
swinging of the thurible. It is well known that in Christianity the saints
produce an “odor of sanctity” caused by the perfume of their virtues. Saint
Martin is no exception to this rule. The life of Martin written by Sulpicius
Severus, and passages of Gregory of Tours’ history describing pilgrims’
visits to the tomb of the saint in the Basilica of Tours, mention the aroma of
the body of the saint both in his lifetime and after his death. Most original
in my eyes is the story of a miracle performed by Saint Martin with a
thurible. Gregory of Tours (1974) reports that in order to avoid shipwreck,
Baudinus, bishop of Tours between 546 and 552, knelt to pray and implore
the help of Saint Martin. And the story continues by narrating that suddenly
a very sweet smell covered the boat, as if someone were using a thurible
and, moreover, one could smell the fragrance of the incense. The story of
the miracle demonstrates clearly the link between the presence of the saint
and a good smell, and its power over the forces of nature. But also, and
especially in relation to the image of the gesture of censing, which
dominates the story, we can suggest that in the story of the miracle Saint
Martin is “mimicking” a liturgical gesture. We cannot say if the story by
Gregory of Tours was known to the monks of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou and
the members of the Brotherhood described in the charter. However, one is
struck by the relationship that can be established between the presence of
Martin to the side of Christ and close to the image of the Maiestas Domini,
whose theophanic vision is possible through the activation of the olfactory
sense generated by the incense from the thurible swung by the celebrant (an
image of Christ) in the lower register, and the story of the miracle of the
saint and “the sweet smell” produced by the use of the thurible by the saint.
Can we likewise connect the liturgical celebration—including the
representation of the figure of Christ as the angel of the Apocalypse—with
Saint Martin because of the good smell he can produce while using a
thurible? To support this connection, we should remember that the charter
states that the confraternity will maintain a light for the celebration of a
weekly mass for the salvation of the souls of the deceased brothers and for a
special funerary office (trentals) celebrated after the death of every brother
and member of the confraternity for their burial in the cemetery of the
monastery. The strong funerary dimension of the charter suggests that the
theme of the angel with the thurible before the altar with the souls of
martyrs under it (Apocalypse 6 and 8) might be present in the painting of
the cartulary to express the link between the martyrs under the altar and the
deceased members of the confraternity of Saint Martin. Here, as in the story
from Gregory’s Dialogues, the theophanic fragrance is complemented by a
light. As Gregory relates, after the miracle of the cloud on the altar, the
lamps of the church turned on repeatedly “by the light sent by God showing
that this place had passed from darkness to light” (Dialogues 3.30). In the
painting of the cartulary of Saint Martin of Canigou, as well as in the
charter of foundation, a similar link is established between the aroma of the
theophany generated by the shaking of the thurible during the ritual
performance and the maintenance of the lights provided by the members of
the confraternity. In a way, the presence of hanging candles in the nave of
the lower register is justified not only by their mention in the text of the
charter but also by the evocation of light and its relationship with the smell
of incense. Finally, we can also include the presence of brothers in the space
of the celebration, as an embodiment of those who are the good smell of
Christ in reference to 2 Corinthians 2:15, a passage that could be read as the
source or one of the main sources that has inspired the iconography of the
painting of the cartulary.
In conclusion, I think I can say that beyond what the painting shows in
relation to the charter, we are dealing with an image in which the expression
of some essential aspects of sacramental theology are revealed—think of
the curtains—through the effects of the sensory activation of the ritual. The
nature of that revelation is multisensory and mainly focused here on an
olfactory activation and its interaction with sound (the bells) and sight (the
vision of the theophany), set in motion not only by the consecration of the
Eucharist but also by the use of the thurible and the smell of incense rising
to God, as Psalm 140 says. The activation of the sight of brothers (and
sisters) in the church is also demonstrated through the fixity of their eyes
towards the place of celebration. These brothers and sisters are the aroma of
Christ (2 Cor 2:15) and also the embodiment of the pleasant smell of God.
Thus, the activation of the liturgy causes the activation of the senses that
allows for the vision of the theophany in a process in which several
complex multisensory effects are produced by the interaction of the senses.
Finally, I would observe that the painting is not contained in a liturgical
manuscript which had to be activated in the course of the celebration of the
ritual. In the case of the Canigou cartulary, the painter chose to show how
the liturgical objects must be activated in the ritual to produce a sensory
dimension and its theological effects. In these ways, the gesture of censing
by the celebrant in the image of the Canigou cartulary helps to make
possible, in the church and at the time of the celebration, the presence of
Christ himself.
 CHAPTER NINE
_____________________________________

Sensory Media: From

Sounds to Silence,
Sight to Insight
HILDEGARD ELISABETH KELLER

In the Middle Ages, especially the earlier Middle Ages, we are dealing not
only with literature before print, but literature before littera. Within a
longue durée, the Middle Ages mark part of a prolonged period of transition
between oral and scribal cultures. A hallmark of oral literature is that textual
cultures are borne by bodies only, above all by the human voice, which in
the Middle Ages was considered to be one of the “senses of the mouth”
(Woolgar 2006: 84ff.).
In this admittedly simplified view, the human body, its gestures, and the
spoken voice are taken not only as primary, but as singular media of
communication, in opposition to the medium of script. As we will see, the
history of the senses provides us with instances of representatives of literate
culture using (closed!) books as powerful objects in confrontation with
largely or completely illiterate audiences. In such settings, texts, let alone
literature in the modern sense, cannot be conceived of as having existed
independently of the rhetors and performers who lent them life (Reichl
2011). In fact, embodied narrative voices were often visually depicted in
manuscripts as diversely as sacred songs to Mary in Spain (Prado-Vilar
2011) or as narrative, didactics, and law in Germany (Starkey and Wenzel
2005).
In view of the attitudes adopted by clashing cultures in the Middle Ages,
the embodiment, involving all the senses, of what we call literature cannot
be sufficiently emphasized. Two famous episodes of colliding cultures, the
first from the beginning of the Middle Ages (sixth century), the second at its
end (sixteenth century) provide vivid examples. The first took place in the
southwest of England, the native territory of the Anglo-Saxons; the second,
on the Brasilian coast in the native territory of the Tupinambá. Each event
lends itself to explication in terms of these two poles—oral performance vs.
the written (or printed) text—of which the Middle Ages offers endless
intersections and permutations. Among the changes that occur, the most
interesting include those involving the transumption of an original sensory
situation into other media that include sophisticated, self-conscious
representations of body and voice.

AUGUSTINE AT THANET
As Bede reports in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Bede 1969:
Book 1), the reintroduction of Christianity to England on the beach of
Thanet in 597 by Augustine of Canterbury and some forty men, among
them “interpreters from the Frankish race according to the command of
Pope St. Gregory” (I.23), seems to be associated with the magical practice
of a culture that was entirely alien to the Anglo-Saxon observers. In Bede’s
account, Augustine first needed to be convinced of his mission: “Augustine,
who had been appointed to be consecrated bishop in case they were
received by the English, that he might, by humble entreaty, obtain of the
Holy Gregory, that they should not be compelled to undertake so dangerous,
toilsome, and uncertain a journey” (I.23). After having been persuaded by
the pope, Augustine and his train pursued their project as follows:

Some days after, the king came into the island, and sitting in the open air, ordered Augustine and
his companions to be brought into his presence. For he had taken precaution that they should not
come to him in any house, lest, according to an ancient superstition, if they practiced any
magical arts, they might impose upon him, and so get the better of him. But they came furnished
with divine, not with magic virtue, bearing a silver cross for their banner, and the image of our
Lord and Savior painted on a board; and singing the litany, they offered up their prayers to the
Lord for the eternal salvation both of themselves and of those to whom they were come. When
 he had sat down, pursuant to the king’s commands, and preached to him and his attendants there
present, the word of life, the king answered thus: “Your words and promises are very fair, but as
they are new to us, and of uncertain import, I cannot approve of them so far as to forsake that
which I have so long followed with the whole English nation. But because you are come from
far into my kingdom, and, as I conceive, are desirous to impart to us those things which you
believe to be true, and most beneficial, we will not molest you, but give you favorable
entertainment, and take care to supply you with your necessary sustenance; nor do we forbid
you to preach and gain as many as you can to your religion.”
Accordingly he permitted them to reside in the city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of
all his dominions, and, pursuant to his promise, besides allowing them sustenance, did not refuse
them liberty to preach. It is reported that, as they drew near to the city, after their manner, with the
holy cross, and the image of our sovereign Lord and King, Jesus Christ, they, in concert, sang this
litany: “We beseech Thee, O Lord, in all Thy mercy, that Thy anger and wrath be turned away
from this city, and from the holy house, because we have sinned. Hallelujah.” (I.25)

Bede describes the confrontation between Anglo-Saxons and Christians

as a clash of cultures: on the one hand, a literate, Latinate, and urban
society, rooted in the Mediterranean, and, on the other hand, a still partially
unsettled and illiterate culture to which books and the anthropomorphic
imagery embodied by icons were utterly foreign. Bede’s description
captures not just the introduction to the British Isles of a new religious
system, but also of new media, foreign to that culture, that aimed to convey
the presence of God through a host of sensorial channels that transformed
the setting into an outdoor church. The ritual performance of Augustine’s
men, involving a rich array of visual and olfactory experiences, such as the
movement of the procession, sumptuous textiles, and incense, also included
the acoustic experience of sung litanies, a practice that, in time, especially
in monasteries and churches of the Carolingian era, would be considered
crucial to achieving union with God. Early medieval vocal performance was
not understood as composition in the modern sense, but as a cosmological
practice. Singing brought monks into harmony with the song of the angels
and thereby permitted them to join in their perpetual praise of God. In
keeping with this belief, it was thought that monastic melodies had in fact
been brought to men by angels (Burnett 2004; Walter 1991).
Hence, certain aspects of sensory experience were bestowed with the
power to transcend the bodily sphere and to transport the soul into wider
realms beyond sensory perception. The senses offered stepping-stones, not
an end in themselves. Hard though it may be for us to imagine, the books
that Augustine brought with him, above all the Gospels in a splendid cover,
were able to “speak” with enormous force to their audience without even
being opened (Rainer 2011; Steenbock 1965). Throughout the Middle Ages,
and even beyond, texts and books were thought of as magical objects that
could heal by virtue of their touch (Watson 2008). Much of medieval art
was addressed to an illiterate audience, for whom experiences of wonder
and awe inspired by alien objects would have served as invitations and
incentives to understand. No wonder that Augustine famously succeeded in
converting the British to Christianity.

HANS STADEN AMONG THE TUPINAMBÁ

Unlike Augustine, the admittedly reluctant missionary among the Anglo-
Saxons, the German arquebusier Hans Staden (1525–76), who came from
Hessen, had no intention to bring Christianity to the Tupinambá on the
Brasilian coast. Yet no less than Bishop Augustine’s, his journey brought
him face to face with a completely alien culture. Having participated
repeatedly in Spanish and Portuguese explorations of the South American
coastline between 1548 and 1555, in 1550 he fell captive to the Tupinambá
in Brazil, a tribe reputed to be cannibals. Staden reports that he was held
prisoner from January to October 1554 on the coast between São Vicente
and the bay on which Rio de Janeiro would later be founded. In contrast to
several other Europeans, whom Staden witnessed meeting their end on the
grill, he survived due to a combination of good luck and a variety of ruses.
Endowed with skills and the authority of a healer and a weather-maker, he
eventually managed to escape both the grill and captivity. Some fellow
Europeans freed him under the pretext of common familial ties (Staden
2007: I–LXVI, 2008: XV–CIV; Duffy and Metcalf 2011).
The story of Staden’s liberation from captivity among the cannibals and
his survival of the perils of returning to Europe was certainly stunning, as
were his descriptions of the ceremonial order of Tupinambá anthropophagic
rituals. Filled with many visual, acoustic, and tactile details, his
observations of their culture and natural habitat made for a startling, even
sensational, story. No doubt the author lived off his adventures for years,
almost certainly on the different stations of his lengthy journey back to his
home town of Marburg. Only by being fixed in print, however, was his
story’s impact transformed and assured. Following its publication in 1557
by Andreas Kolbe, Staden’s story became world-famous. The returning
adventurer was fortunate enough to circulate his account, not in the form of
a handwritten diary or journal (as other discoverers had done), but rather in
the still relatively novel medium of print, which offered radically new
communicative possibilities. The edition included authoritative paratexts,
such as Staden’s dedication to Philip, Landgrave of Hesse (dated
Wolffhagen, June 20, 1556), and a prologue by the medical doctor Johannes
Dryander, according to Staden a friend of his father (dated Marburg,
December 21, 1556). Moreover, the imprint of 1557 made Staden’s account
that much more attractive by including illustrations in the form of
woodcuts, produced according to his own instructions.
 FIGURE 9.1:Hans Staden, Warhaftige Historia und
Beschreibung (Marburg: Andreas Kolbe, 1557), 103.
Courtesy of the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

At issue is not only what Staden related (for example, the cannibalistic
practices represented in both text and image), but how the story was told in
one of the most powerful media of mass communication ever invented. For
Staden’s audience, his experiences must have raised questions that were
liminal, not only in terms of culture and geography, but also in terms of the
media by which they were communicated. The communication between the
Europeans and their captors was heavily impeded by profound language
barriers. Both sides were forced to rely on their ability to use and
comprehend non-verbal means of messaging. Staden, writing at the end of
an epoch and at the very limit of contemporary human knowledge,
describes a range of sensory impressions and experiences that, in part by
chance, saved his life. After publication, he conveyed this alterity to
contemporaries who would never see much more than their home town.
Staden’s account thus provides a segue to the modern interpreter’s stance
vis-à-vis the Middle Ages, which are in some respects no less remote from
our experience than early colonial Brazil was from his own.

A SONG TO SILENCE A NOISY WORLD: ST.

TRUDPERTER HOHELIED
In many ways, medieval mysticism also represents a liminal region
presenting a rich and varied, yet unfamiliar, territory through which we can
study the senses and their presence (as well as their representation) in texts
that themselves functioned as sensory media. Despite their ostensibly
transcendental subject matter, these texts, especially those in the tradition of
bridal mysticism, employ baroque erotic imagery to describe experiences
that often also involved elaborate bodily rituals, whether flagellation,
intricate prayer gestures, or forms of dancing and Christocentric
pantomimes, as reported in the life of Elizabeth of Spalbeek (Brown 2008).
Whether for the practitioner or the reader, all the senses were
orchestrated to achieve or describe that which lay beyond experience. The
Song of Songs both invokes and evokes the senses of vision, hearing, touch,
smell, and taste. It can accurately be described as the most sensory and
sensual text in the Bible. From the patristic period on, by means of the
theological hermeneutics of the spiritual sense of Scripture, Christian
exegesis had transformed the Song of Songs into a spiritual Magna Carta,
an erotic narrative for the micro- as well as the macrocosmos, that would
achieve its fullest flowering in the context of medieval monasticism.
The monks of the twelfth century, with Bernard of Clairvaux the most
systematic among them, began to exploit the visual, acoustic, olfactory,
gustatory, and tactile aspects of heterosexual love to express the ineffable
movements of the soul’s relationship to its heavenly bridegroom, Christ.
The soul could also be conceived as a spider “in the middle of its web,
feeling all movement both within and without the web” (Woolgar 2006: 29).
Sermons and treatises, often consisting of excerpts gathered by experts for
an audience of experts, discovered in the literal sense of the Song an
allegory of the cosmic choreography of the creator and his “brides.” This
way of reading, however, disabled the literal sense; in fact, monks (and, at a
somewhat later date, nuns) went so far as to warn against it. The kisses and
breasts, as well as the embraces and emotions binding two lovers, could
potentially be regarded as seductive, even dangerous. All this infuriated
later commentators such as Johann Gottfried Herder, who scornfully
proclaimed that no book of the Old Testament had been “more mishandled
than the so-called Song of Songs of Solomon” (Keller 1993: 175–210; Köpf
1985; Ohly 1958; Richard of St. Victor 1969, 2011).
From at least the end of the twelfth century, the Song of Songs had
achieved the status of a text which the reader ought to meditate on in an
experimental, that is, experiential manner. In light of Bernard’s description
of the Song as the “book of experience,” it was considered to have a special
appeal for its readers (Mulder-Bakker and McAvoy 2009). The earliest
entirely German-language commentary on the Song of Songs is the
St.Trudperter Hohelied, written by an anonymous author c. 1160 for a
community of nuns. The poem most likely was read out loud during the
mass on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (August 15), perhaps also
during the monastic collatio. The text thus fulfilled liturgical and
paraliturgical functions (Ohly 1998: 317–81). The work can be situated
within the tradition of specula, which make of the text a “mirror” in which
the readers should seek their own reflection (Bradley 1954; Grabes 1973).
The bride of God should contemplate the “mirror of loving knowledge of
God” in order to achieve clarity of vision, to gain self-knowledge, and, not
least, to be transformed, also in her bodily and sensory existence.
The St. Trudperter Hohelied is a work of extraordinary poetic quality.
Syntactic rhythms and affective appeals to the reader contribute
substantially to its characteristic voice and sound. The poem’s warm
aesthetic is intended to animate the female listener to enter into a dialogue
with herself and with God. The performance of the text makes many
demands of the reader, for, as is well known, until far into the modern
period, the vocal and bodily performance of a written text remained
important aspects of its function. Emphatic recitation was a communal
aesthetic event that was to be enacted by engaging as many of the senses as
possible. In this context, “aesthetic” needs to be understood in its root sense
as involving perception through the senses. This aesthetic dimension stood
at the center of monastic concepts of speech and discourse, from the singing
of the Divine Office in the choir to the reading of edifying texts out loud in
the refectory, all the way to the mumbling “rumination” (ruminatio) and
“tasting” of wisdom (sapere, sapor, sapientia) in prayers spoken in the
cloister.
The prologue provides a unique invocation of divine love, a hymn to the
Holy Spirit as the patron of the spiritual person and of the Song of Songs
itself. Among the most extraordinary features of this section of the text is
the exegete’s claim that the wedding song expresses itself in sound just as
light manifests itself by its appearance. The acoustic character of these
verses in the prologue invites the listeners with a grand gesture to leave the
noise of the world behind them and to permit the Song of Songs to open
their senses, so as to be able to participate in the cosmic love dialogue:

lûte dich, heiteriu stimme, daz dich die unmüezegen vernemen.

ganc her vür, süezer tôn, daz die vernemenden dich loben.
hebe dich, wünneclicher clanc, daz dû gesweigest den kradem der unsaeligen welte.
(Be loud, blithe voice, so that the unquiet hear you. Go ahead, sweet tone, so that the listeners
praise you. Lift yourself up, pleasurable sound, so that you bring the noise of the unholy world
to silence.)

One question seems especially pertinent in light of medieval exegesis of the

Song of Songs: what made the Song of Songs so readily available for
spiritual teaching? It appears as if the intense sensory experiences and
carnality evoked by the text provided the ideal basis for laying out a
pathway to the supra-sensual. A paradox resulted in that all the senses were
required to communicate the presence of God (McGinn 2001). This
paradox, moreover, manifested itself in a general fashion in the liturgy and
in the performance of the sacraments (visible manifestations of grace),
which appealed to all five senses (Palazzo 2010). Numerous liturgical
objects and implements for specific ecclesiastical ceremonies augment
specific festive occasions with sensory dimensions. Reliquaries and
monstrances were carried by clerics or bishops in annual processions, not
only within churches, but also through the streets and fields under canopies
to the accompaniment of chant. The visual and the auditory also
intermingled when, on Palm Sunday, an almost life-size figure of Christ
astride a donkey was pulled through the church or when, on Ascension Day,
a statue of Christ was pulled up through an oculus in the vaults of a church.
On a more intimate scale, bells on Christ Child cradles would ring when the
cradle was rocked, perhaps evoking the ringing of bells in church and, more
specifically, at the culmination of the mass. The perfume of incense
permeated church interiors. To the olfactory was added the gustatory:
communion represented but one of many material and immaterial
experiences of salvation that were defined in terms of “sweetness” (Ohly
1989).
The rehabilitation of the senses in the High Middle Ages was both
enabled and expressed by the concept of “speculation” as developed in
Victorine theology. Speculation, rooted in the familiar medieval notion that
all of creation mirrored the divine sphere, stresses the importance of
sensory experience in general, not just the sense of sight alone, as the
foundation for the knowledge of “things unseen” or, by way of analogy,
things unheard, unsmelled, untasted, and untouched. The theology of
speculation took as its point of departure the touchstone text for all of
Christian natural theology, Paul’s statement in Romans 1:20 that the
invisibilia Dei, “the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world,
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal
power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.” Paul essentially
offers a variant of the argument from design: the pagans who deny the
existence of one true God (indirectly identified as being triune by virtue of
the “invisible things” presented in the plural) have no excuse because, even
without the evidence of revelation, they ought to know better simply by
virtue of the evidence of creation perceived by means of the senses. The
senses provide stepping stones to higher levels of contemplative experience
that ultimately surpass them. This proof had formed part of Paul’s argument
against idolatry (Hamburger 2000). By the late thirteenth century, for
example in the writings of (or attributed to) the Cistercian mystic Gertrude
of Helfta, it was turned on its head, so that she could cite it as authorizing
her visions, many of them prompted by images:

But, as invisible and spiritual things cannot be understood by the human intellect except in
visible and corporeal images, it is necessary to clothe them in human and bodily forms. This is
what Master Hugh demonstrates in the sixteenth chapter of his discourse on The Inner Man: “In
order to refer to things familiar to this lower world and to come down to the level of human
weakness, Holy Scripture describes things by means of visible forms, and thus impresses on our
imagination spiritual ideas by means of beautiful images which excite our desires.
Gertrude of Helfta 1993: 54–5

From a text such as this, which clothes spiritual desire in the language of
the senses, as well as providing it with a theoretical underpinning, it is but
one short step to the almost orgiastic excess of a work such as the Stimulus
divini amoris, no longer attributed to Bonaventure, but, if to anyone at all,
then to James of Milan. As in the case of the doctrine of the spiritual senses,
which had its beginnings in the writings of Origen, the theology of
speculation represented an effort to appropriate the realm of sensory
experience for spiritual ends.
It is no longer fashionable to think of theology as having had an impact
on devotional practice and, hence, on the use of the senses. Over time,
however, the theology of speculation and the sympathies it articulated had a
noticeable impact on devotional art and, still more generally, on the genesis
of Gothic art tout court. Once again, the writings linked to Gertrude of
Helfta bear eloquent witness (1968: III.iv; see Hamburger 2012: 289–90).
In a drowsy state, Gertrude looks at the crucifix hanging above her bed.
Paraphrasing the Song of Songs 1:3, “Draw me after you,” the crucified
Christ tells the Cistercian that his love draws her close to him. The context
of the reference to the Canticle evokes the Eucharist in that the place to
which the Sponsa is transported is the biblical wine cellar. Gertrude places a
second, smaller crucifix between her breasts (cf. Song of Songs 1:12: “a
bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts”).
Having systematically evoked the sense of sight (the half dream or vision of
the first crucifix), the sense of taste (the reference to the wine cellar), the
sense of touch (the second crucifix between her breasts), and, of course, the
sense of hearing (insofar as the entire episode is presented as an audition as
well as a vision), the text proceeds to conjure up the sense of smell.
Gertrude removes the iron nails from the crucifix, then replaces them with
cloves (in Middle High German negelkîn, i.e., “spice nails”) after which she
kisses Christ’s body over and over again. When Gertrude explicitly asks
Christ if he can take pleasure in a devotional exercise that appeals more to
the senses than the spirit, Christ tells her that, just as a usurer accepts any
coin, so too he accepts all tokens of affection. Gertrude proceeds to tell her
beloved that if he delights in such things, he will be even more pleased by a
poem on the Passion that she has composed. Christ replies that his delight
in her composition will be like that of a lover who can lead his beloved into
a garden full of sweet-smelling flowers, the seductive sound of harmonious
melodies, and the taste of the best fruits. The entire passage, which plays on
the idea of Christ’s sweet suffering in the Passion, represents an overt
defense of devotional practices that appeal directly to all the senses and that
would themselves bear fruit in the paradisiacal imagery of Gothic sculpture
and fifteenth-century painting (Falkenburg 1994, 1997).
The various ways in which the senses could be sanctified in visions and
devotions present the starkest of contrasts with the assault on the senses
with which all but the most privileged would have been confronted in daily
life. Pomanders countered such offenses as open sewers and rotting garbage
and were also thought to help ward off disease (Touw 1982). Within and
without monastic precincts, objects and effects that pleased the senses were
themselves considered an assault on the soul. The perception and
production of pleasing colors provides a clear-cut case. Moralists held the
makers of pigments, and, above all, dyers, responsible for sinful visual
stimulants encountered by the common man. Dyers represented one of
those professions that had an immediate and unsalutory effect on urban life.
It was not simply that the production of their products polluted the air with
noxious odors, due to the urine that they required to carry out their work,
but those same products—blue, red, and green garments—could lead men
into temptation. Not by accident do late medieval Passion paintings show
Christ’s tormentors wearing an array of fantastic, brightly colored, even
foppish garments (Mellinkoff 1993). A didactic moral satire written during
or shortly after the Council of Constance (1414–18) assigns the dyers to the
deepest pit of hell (Barack 1863: 12907–13154).
 The extent to which objects of daily life, works of art, and literary
entertainment all sought to address the several senses can be reconstructed
above all from the testimony provided by the nobility, patricians, and, at a
later date, the middle classes. Works intended to provide popular
entertainment attempted to engross their public in an audiovisual
environment insofar as the texts adopted graphic demonstrative strategies.
On some occasions, two media could be combined with one another. Texts
combined with images provide only the most obvious example of this
phenomenon. Sometimes, as in the epic, Iwein, texts interacted with wall
paintings in settings that possibly also included actors, narrators, and
musicians (Lutz and Rigaux 2007).

IWEIN, THE INVISIBLE MAN

The courtly epic Iwein, adapted by Hartmann of Aue (1984, 2004) from the
French Le chevalier au lion by Chrétien de Troyes (1985, 1994), and the
wall-paintings within the same narrative tradition decorating a hall at Castle
Rodenegg (Tyrol), engage their audiences with an encounter between a
visible and an invisible combatant. The two literary examples, one in
German, the other in French, provide impressive examples of how twelfth-
century courtly epic self-consciously manipulates intra- and extra-textual
issues of visibility. The invisible murderer in the first part of the story does
not get caught because he employs a magic tool, a ring, comparable to the
invisibility cloak familiar to fans of Harry Potter, common in heroic epic of
the Middle Ages (Keller 2008).
According to the relevant section of the plot, during a gregarious round
of storytelling at Pentecost, Iwein hears another knight tell a tale of an
unsuccessful aventiure (adventure). Mobilized by this information, he
secretly leaves the court and soon thereafter initiates his own involvement
in a life-threatening action when fighting his first opponent, Askalon. Iwein
wounds him severely and, following hard on his heels, gallops behind him
into the castle. While reaching out for the final sword thrust, the deadly
portcullis of the castle’s entrance falls, missing Iwein’s back so that he just
manages to survive (as opposed to his horse and Askalon, who both die).
He, however, is now trapped in the closed-off entrance. His survival is very
much in doubt.
Lunete, the lady-in-waiting to Laudine, the now widowed lady of the
castle, and a very important trickster figure within this part of the narrative,
enters the scene and secretly visits the trapped Iwein to announce his certain
death. His determination to fight an obviously hopeless battle also
motivates Lunete’s wish to help him more effectively, by cunningly
reaching for the magic ring. If worn correctly—and Lunete instructs Iwein
on just how to do that—the ring will hide its wearer “like wood under the
bark.” This magic tool makes possible the physical fallacy of perception
that helps Hartmann make sense of the following events, which find Iwein
lying on a bed between the two grills of the portcullis.
Laudine’s followers approach loudly in order to avenge the killing of
their lord, but they fail miserably, twice. Driven by all-consuming anger,
bearing superior weapons and outnumbering the isolated, if camouflaged,
victim on the bed, Laudine’s followers succumb to the fallacy of perception
in an unpredictable way. Blinded by magic deception, they become
desperate. The wild gesticulation of the avengers contrasts with the order
imposed on the courtly body in medieval aesthetics and instead resembles
the depictions of dancers or angry, crazy, or possessed people in medieval
iconography (Eco 2002; Garnier 1982–9). Movements and gestures here
clearly transcend fighting and would have been interpreted as signifiers of
insanity and impending loss of self were it not for the omniscience of the
narrator. A lengthy passage illuminates Laudine’s expressive mourning with
many topical motifs drawn from the body language of mourning (Lauwers
1997). Laudine becomes the center of attention by clawing, scratching, and
tearing at her entirely strange yet beautiful appearance. Chrétien explicitly
associates the body language of Laudine with that of the insane.
Despite the onslaught, Iwein finds himself comfortably invisible in the
midst of the action. This is a status not normally granted to humans, a fact
of which Iwein himself is aware. Chrétien here emphasizes Lunete’s
frivolousness even more. The maid clearly announces the scene as a visual
spectacle, but only for those who need not fear anything. Objectively, this
can apply only to the observers outside of the text. Due to this fundamental
asymmetry of perception, the strange movements of the blinded, fumbling
pack and their blazing anger are especially amusing for the audience. When
the maid announces to the invisible hero soulas et delis (joy and
amusement), she conveys it simultaneously to listeners and readers. This
pleasure requires investigation in terms of its epistemological and sensory
premises. Narratives such as this dealt in a sophisticated manner with the
sensory and imaginative engagement of readers and listeners because, in
contrast to the intra-textual characters, they were granted the privilege of
both seeing what everybody in the text could see and observing what no one
in the text was granted to see. The engagement of the audience’s senses
raises epistemological questions as well. How, one might ask, were seeing
(the murals, the performers, and, most likely, their gestures such as pointing
to specific scenes as depicted on the walls) and hearing (the voices of those
recitating, perhaps of singers too) employed in the presentation of Iwein,
and what might have been the impact of the castle’s setting on its
performance and reception?
We have seen how blind spots in visual perception play an important
thematic role in the Iwein narratives due to an invisible combatant. The
representation and perception of invisibility poses rather different
challenges in visual media such as the wall paintings at Rodenegg. One
would assume that this particular plot defies visual representation. It also,
however, presents a possibility. The painter could follow the author in
making the invisible protagonist visible to his audience, by his own means,
so that both would grant their audience the privilege of feeling the
exclusiveness that comes with the denial to others of such sensory and
cognitive advantages. Before turning to the murals at Castle Rodenegg,
however, it must first be observed, if only in passing, that the pictorial
depiction of the invisible by no means represented an unfamiliar challenge
for medieval artists (Curschmann 1993). The theology of the imago Dei had
a manifest impact on anthropomorphic visualizations of the deity and the
development of an image theory designed to justify visualization without,
however, permitting it to become mired in idolatry (Hamburger and Bouché
2005; Kessler 2000). As dictated by the doctrine of the Incarnation,
representations of the visible, human Christ had in some way to point
beyond themselves to his invisible, divine nature. The question of how to
make the invisible visible was central to Christianity from its inception, as
was the notion of making the blind see, whether in literal terms, through
healing miracles, or in spiritual terms, through religious enlightenment.
 The South Tyrolean wall paintings at Rodenegg were painted only shortly
after the composition of Hartmann’s romance. The painted room is
accessible only over long wooden bridges and several gateways, one of
which could be closed with a portcullis, a protective mechanism that was
exceedingly rare in Tyrolean castles, even in the Late Middle Ages and, in
fact, was at first totally unknown in Southern Tyrol (Schupp and Szklenar
1996: 39–40 and n. 125). Whoever recited the story could have made use of
this architectural parallel between the castle of Rodenegg and the site of the
intratextual narrative action, the castle of Laudine, in a performance
involving two media. He could build upon the concrete spatial experience
of the audience and explicitly refer to the extraordinary portcullis in the
castle, the device which turns it into Iwein’s prison. There is no evidence
for a multi-media presentation of the Iwein narratives at Rodenegg, but in
view of the evidence from other South Tyrolean castles, one may reckon
with such a possibility. For example, at Runkelstein, the most famous South
Tyrolean castle, there is solid evidence for certain customs in performance.
Here it can be shown that Niklaus Vintler employed a speaker in addition to
other entertainers, especially musicians (their pay for the year 1401 is
registered in the Schlandersberg account book). For the most part, such
performance artists probably performed in rooms with wall paintings
decorated with literary motifs (Lutz and Rigaux 2007; Wetzel 2000: 303).
Central to our discussion is the question: how to portray someone who is
invisible? In modernism, attempts to convey images of invisibility using the
eye often result in the self-referential showing of the showing, or, for that
matter, the showing of not being able to show. Scene 10 in the Iwain
frescoes solves this representational problem by referring back to a
perspective established within narration, one involving the initiated circle of
observers. The reconstruction of the illustration’s design, however, remains
an open question due to partial damage to this segment of the painting.
Nonetheless, a fragment of a hand and a forehead are recognizable as most
likely belonging to Iwein, who appears lying on the patterned bed-covers. If
this hypothesis is correct, then the invisible Iwein was depicted visibly as a
figure. In this case, the conception of the image does not represent the
perception of the deceived, who swing their weapons throughout the room
and point their fingers at their own eyes and at the eyes of others. Instead,
the fresco tries to transpose the omniscience of the romance’s audience to
its medial equivalent. It tries to create a sort of “omnivisuality” of the
frescoes, which wrap around the room.

FIGURE 9.2:Ywain frescoes at Schloss Rodenegg, Scene 10.

Reproduced from Volker Schupp and Hans Szklenar, Ywain
auf Schloß Rodenegg. Eine Bildergeschichte nach dem
“Iwein” Hartmanns von Aue (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke
Verlag, 1996). By permission of the publisher.

The experience of the invisibly visible protagonist necessarily relies on

both media when it opens up an inner-mental space of visuality, in which all
figures are shown before the inner eye by the narration. More than any
other scene, the segment depicting the visible-invisible Iwein depends
strongly on its medial opposite in a performative situation—the oral
presentation supported by mimicry and the gestures of a possibly
professional recitator. How else would the audience have “seen” that the
pictorially visible Iwein was actually invisible on the level of action (unless
they could simply bring the story to mind from memory)? How else would
the audience have recognized that this explains why the avengers grapple
with their weapons and point at their eyes? Both media generate a visual
event for their audience. Through the courtly epic, the narrative intervention
on its own conveys the perspectival complexity. Only it can distinguish
between the informed and the deceived.
Today, we can no longer see the wall paintings of Rodenegg as they
would have been perceived by their original audience. Time has defaced
Scene 10, causing a performance failure. Apart from its fragmentary state,
the formerly visible-invisible Iwein has vanished from the colored layer of
chalk and has been replaced with a white area of restoration. This act of
replacement lifts the medium as well as the portrayed motif (invisibility)
into consciousness, an act that could not be more suitable even though it is
only a coincidental media-aesthetic trick of time. It is the substantiality of
the medium itself that now obviously compensates for the meagerness of
the representation.

GESTURES THAT CREATE REALITY: THE

SACHSENSPIEGEL
Gesture, involving both touch and sound, not to mention pain, if the gesture
was violent in nature, played a critical role in many spheres, as varied as the
sign language of monks enjoined to silence in stylized signs of obscenity
(Barakat 1975; Bruce 2007; Ziolkowski 1998). In religious contexts,
gestures with visual as well as tactile dimensions served an essential role,
with prayer gestures providing only the most obvious example (Schmitt
1990; Trexler 1987). Glittering hand reliquaries (which did not always
contain hand relics) translated temporal gestures into scintillating, stylized
actors in liturgical performance (Hahn 1997). The rhetoric of gestures also
played a critical role in the political sphere. In fact, the Middle Ages has
been called the age of gesture (Le Goff 1964: 440; Schmitt 1990; for the
German scholarship, Wenzel 1995; for the English and Italian, Burrow
2002). Gestures not only provided a major means of non-verbal
communication, involving the senses of sight, hearing, and touch, they also,
despite the spread of literacy, retained the power to create a reality of their
own. For example, the feudal rite of immixtio manuum (interposition of
hands), by its very nature a ceremony that involved physical touch,
represented one of the most consequential expressions of political power in
ceremonies of homage and fealty. When the vassal joined his hands together
as if in prayer between the hands of his feudal lord, it was the physical
contact between the two agents that established their relationship. From that
moment on, the vassal’s existence became but one small part of the life of
his lord. The reciprocal obligations of vassalage find their reflection in
numerous textual sources, not only archival documents, but also narratives
such as Chrétien de Troyes’ Le Chevalier de la Charrete (3224–6; Burrow
2002: 12–13).
In hardly any other area, however, was the shift from corporeal
communication via performance to written document predicated on literacy
so dramatically as in law. Performativity strongly characterizes the
Germanic-German concept of law: “The bodies of the persons participating
in the legal process functioned to a certain extent as concrete embodiments
of abstract concepts, of the law itself” (Ott 1992: 226–7). One such legal
ritual involved a battle against an opponent who was invisible because,
quite simply, he was not present to take part in the duel. The actual absence
of one of the two participants underscores the ritualized and, hence,
controlled character of the ceremonial battle. The battle in question is a
particular type of duel at court, an instrument of judgment that was used in
lieu of a trial as a medieval strategy for rule-oriented conflict management
that evolved into less violent verbal processes still in use in courts. In these
special circumstances, the fight was staged publicly with a single fighter
according to strict, ritualized rules of movement.
The regulations governing this late-medieval trial process, both the
equipment and the personnel, are described in minute detail in Eike von
Repgow’s Sachsenspiegel (1991, 1999) (written between 1209 and 1233),
one of the oldest and most influential law books written in the German
language. The five paragraphs of the Landrecht I 63 contain extensive
descriptions of the iudicium pugnae, which are illustrated in three of the
four available manuscripts. The elaborateness of his rules documents a
long-established tradition of court battles. These rules also structure combat
against an accused who failed to appear as hypothetical action with a fully-
fledged choreography against the combatant, who was considered to be
present in absentia: “If the accused does not present himself after having
been invited a third time, the plaintiff shall rise and begin the fight,
executing two blows and one stab against the wind” (Ldr. I 63 §5, ed. Ebel:
68). As mentioned, the duel with an invisible opponent is illustrated visually
in three of the four extant manuscripts (it is omitted in the manuscript from
Heidelberg); the last move, the blow against the wind, is visualized with a
head (for example in Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf.
3.1. Aug. 2° fol. 26r, picture register 3).
This performance of a strictly monitored course of movements justifies a
judgment in favor of the fighter actually present: “With this, the accused
was convicted of whatever it was of which he stood accused, on account of
which he had been challenged to a duel. And the judge was then to judge
the accused as if he had been defeated in combat” (Ldr. I 63 §5, ed. Schott:
88).
 FIGURE 9.3: Eike von Repgow, Der Sachsenspiegel, Landrecht
I 63, 5, according to: Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August-
Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 3.1. Aug. 2°, fol. 26r. By permission
of the library.

PERFORMATIVE PUNISHMENTS
Visual weapons belong to every chapter in the history of European pictorial
propaganda. In the late Middle Ages, they served, inter alia, as a means of
regulating conflicts and of resolving private and public struggles over
rights. They targeted the personal honor of individuals as well as of
representatives of city governments or institutions. Both north and south of
the Alps, documents combining text and image were deployed for both
private and public purposes. So-called pitture infamanti (defamatory
images) are known from Italian cities of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries (Edgerton 1985). In these over life-sized pictures placed on the
exterior walls of public buildings, not only criminals and traitors, but also
debtors, were portrayed in poses that robbed them of their honor or with
attributes of the punishments to which they had been condemned in
absentia.
Whereas such images were employed south of the Alps as instruments of
propaganda, north of the Alps between the late fourteenth and sixteenth
centuries they served as so-called Schmähbriefe (defamatory letters) that
were copied and displayed in public in order to exert pressure within private
conflicts, many of which involved financial disputes (Lentz 2004). These
“letters,” which often included a narrative component, consisted of a series
of images comparable to a comic book. Obscene and, after the Reformation,
even pornographic elements, were hardly uncommon. The explicit purpose
was to do permanent damage to the reputation of the targeted personages. A
creditor in default could be depicted half-naked on a pillory, hanging upside
down on a gallows, as Judas, or being swallowed up by a hell-mouth. These
vicious attacks often employed the standard symbolic means of self-
representation (such as seals, coats-of-arms, and banners), but now
emblazoned with cow and pigs’ anuses or else with depictions of
excrement.
Not all legal struggles involved resort to such sordid means. Sanctions
stipulated by late medieval law codes and customs rely on various sensory
processes, mostly acoustic and visual, of making something present or
presenting it to the eyes or ears (through town criers). These were often
accompanied by performative actions with a theatrical character.
Documentation from the city of Lucerne dating to the end of the thirteenth
and beginning of the fourteenth century as well as from 1412 testifies to the
use of various spectacles of punishment for both men and women. The
punishments range in severity from anonymous warnings or, worse,
accusations against specific individuals issued from the pulpit by a parish
priest, to the demonstrative carrying out of a particular punishment. For
example, when on one occasion two men and two women were arrested,
restrained, and placed together in a cart, then led through the city’s public
squares and most important streets, the offical town crier proclaimed their
misdeeds (Greco-Kaufmann 2009; van Dülmen 1995).

FIGURE 9.4: Initial A of Ainer küsterin. Johannes Meyer,

Ämterbuch. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University, The Lilly
Library, MS Ricketts 198, fol. 23r. Courtesy of the Lilly
Library at Indiana University.
 OMNIPRESENT BELLS
Mixing with the shouts of town criers would have been the constant ringing
of bells. Bells and their chiming are among the earliest of European mass
media. Their ringing accompanied people throughout the Middle Ages
during every aspect of their life, from baptism to burial. The proper use of
bells was regulated by “Ringing Rules”: in a time without clocks, they
summoned people to individual or collective prayer morning, noon, and
night. The sound of bells signaled the beginning and end of the workday
and of ecclesiastical ceremonies, the opening of markets, and the times at
which innkeepers could offer their guests drinks. Bells announced the
moment of transubstantiation during the mass as well as the moment of a
given person’s death. Further still, they served as reminders of signal
moments in liturgical commemoration, such as the resurrection at Easter or,
at mid-afternoon on Good Friday, the hour of Christ’s death. Bells were
consecrated, baptized, and very frequently adorned by inscriptions in which
they “spoke” in the first person. It was believed that their sound could
mitigate the effects of bad weather: storms, lightening, thunder, and frost.
Bells were considered to be vasa sacra (holy vessels), which, like priests,
were consecrated in special consecration ceremonies, not simply blessed
like other ecclesiastical implements or furnishings, such as candles. In
short, as this list indicates, bells had a wide range from signifying to
apotropaic functions (Hense 1998).
The multivalency of bell-ringing in medieval cities, not only in cathedrals
and monastic churches, but also in civic contexts, easily escapes
comprehension by a modern-day observer (or listener). The ringing of bells
represented an exercise of power, acoustically expressed. Bells therefore
had enormous symbolic significance. The number of bells that any city
possessed, as well as the assortment of bells in its belltowers, served as
measures of its power, an aspect clearly indicated by the destruction of
belfries during conflicts between spiritual and civic authorities.

CONCLUSION
Medieval texts and artifacts both evoked and produced an abundance of
sensory experiences. Even if at times in an ambivalent way, they celebrated
(or exploited) the possibilities of the body and its sensorial apparatus as the
prerequisite of any cognition, whether of the world, of the self, or of God.
They served as vehicles of expression and communication, as the point of
departure for the transformation of life from a matter-oriented, hence more
reductive, state of being into a more inclusive existence embracing both the
exterior and interior senses.
 NOTES
Chapter Two

1 My PhD student Kevin Mummey and I have worked on the issue of the medieval city imagined
in Mummey and Reyerson (2011).
2 The translations were made by Brian Toye, MA, University of Minnesota, in his term paper
(Toye 2010).

Chapter Three

1 It was described by H. Sauval in 1724 as measuring 66 × 8 toises. The medieval and early
modern toise of Paris had a length of 1.949 meters; in 1799 this was changed to 2 meters (Zupko
1989: 584).

Chapter Four
1 I wish to thank Andy Oakes and Anne-Cecile Caseau for proofreading this text.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABBREVIATIONS
BL British Library, London
EETS Early English Text Society, London: Oxford University Press
LMA London Metropolitan Archives, London
PL Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina. Ed. Jacques-Pau
Migne. 221 vols. Paris: Garnier.

MANUSCRIPTS AND UNPUBLISHED WORKS

Chapter One

Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 4015: depositions before

the commissioners enquiring into the sanctity of Thomas Cantilupe,
Bishop of Hereford.

Chapter Three

BL, Harley MS 45: A myrour to lewde men and wymmen in which they may
see god, c. 1400. A prose redaction of the Middle English Speculum
vitae. For a printed edition, see Venetia Nelson (ed.), A Myrour to Lewde
Men and Wymmen, Middle English Texts, 14 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter,
1981).
BL, Royal MS 8 C i, ff. 122v–143v: An early to mid fifteenth-century Middle
English reworking, for a general audience, of the treatise on the five
senses in the Ancrene Wisse (1215 or 1221–50). A torn entry in the
contemporary table of contents (f. 1v) calls it optimus tractus de v
sensibus secundum Lichef … William Lichfield (d. 1448), the evident
 author, was rector of the London church of All Hallows the Great. For a
printed edition, see A. C. Baugh (ed.), The English Text of the Ancrene
Riwle, EETS os 232 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956).
LMA, CLA/007/FN/01/018. MS Translation of Bridgemasters’ Accounts,
Rolls 1–8 (1381–9), by T.A.M. Bishop (1935).
Truro, Cornwall County Record Office, AR 37/41/1 (1382), AR 37/44
(1383): Travel accounts of John de Dinham.

Chapter Eight

Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France. MS lat. 1141: Liturgical libellus of

Charles the Bald.
Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France. MS lat. 2508: Odo of Asti.
Commentary on the Psalms.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France. MS lat. 9436: Sacramentary of
Saint-Denis.
Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France. MS n.a. lat. 1203: Godescalc.
Evangelistary.
Paris. Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Collection Jean Masson MS 38: Cartulary of
Saint-Martin-du-Canigou.

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 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Martha Carlin is Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee. Her research focuses on London, its suburbs, and everyday life
in medieval England, with emphasis on the history of food, work, and
shopping. Her publications include: Medieval Southwark (1996); London
and Southwark Inventories, 1316–1650: A Handlist of Extents for Debts
(1997); (as co-editor) Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (1998); and (as
co-editor and co-translator) Lost Letters of Medieval Life: English Society,
1200–1250 (2013).

Béatrice Caseau is Associate Professor of Byzantine History, University of

Paris-Sorbonne. She specializes in the study of religions in late antiquity
and the Byzantine world. Her publications include: (as co-editor)
Pèlerinages et lieux saints dans l’antiquité et le moyen âge (2006);
Byzance: économie et société du milieu du VIIIe siècle à 1204 (2007); (as
co-editor) Pratiques de l’eucharistie dans les Églises d’Orient et
d’Occident (Antiquité et Moyen Âge) (2009); and (as editor) Les réseaux
familiaux (2012).

Vincent Gillespie is J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and

Language at the University of Oxford and Honorary Director of the Early
English Text Society. He specializes in medieval literary theory and the
psychology of literary response. Recent publications include: (as co-editor)
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism (2011); (as co-
editor) After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England
(2011); and Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late-Medieval Religious
Writing in England (2012).

Pekka Kärkkäinen is University Lecturer in Ecumenics at the University

of Helsinki (Finland). He has published on Martin Luther’s theology and
late medieval philosophy. He specializes in Trinitarian theology in the
sixteenth century and Aristotelian psychology. He is the author of Luthers
trinitarische Theologie des Heiligen Geistes (2005) and is co-editor (with
Simo Knuuttila) of the volume Theories of Perception in Medieval and
Early Modern Philosophy (2008).

Hildegard Elisabeth Keller is Professor of German Literature before 1700

at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the University of Zürich. She
regularly contributes to exhibitions, and has been a literary contributor to
Austrian and Swiss television since 2009. Her publications include: a five-
volume study and edition of the works of the Zürich city physician and
playwright, Jakob Ruf (2008); and three audio books: Trilogie des Zeitlosen
(Trilogy of the Timeless) (2011).

Richard G. Newhauser is Professor of English and Medieval Studies at

Arizona State University, Tempe. His research focuses on the moral
tradition and sensory history. His publications include: The Early History of
Greed (2000; reprint 2006); Sin: Essays on the Moral Tradition in the
Western Middle Ages (2007); (as co-editor) Sin in Medieval and Early
Modern Culture (2012); and (as translator) Peter of Limoges, The Moral
Treatise on the Eye (2012).

Eric Palazzo is Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of

Poitiers (France) and senior member of the Institut universitaire de France-
Paris. He is a specialist in medieval liturgy, iconography, and rituals,
focusing on the study of liturgical manuscripts and their illustration. His
publications on these subjects include: Les sacramentaires de Fulda (1994);
L’évêque et son image (1999); Liturgie et société au Moyen Age (2000); and
L’espace rituel et le sacré dans le christianisme (2008).

Kathryn Reyerson is Professor of History and founding director of the

Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her current
research involves issues of identity among merchants and pirates in the
medieval Mediterranean world. Among her many publications are Society,
Law, and Trade in Medieval Montpellier (1995); The Art of the Deal:
Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier (2002); and Jacques
Coeur: Entrepreneur and King’s Bursar (2005).
Faith Wallis is Associate Professor, Department of History and Classical
Studies, McGill University. Her research interests center on medieval
science and medicine. Recent publications include Medieval Medicine: A
Reader (2010), and “The Ghost in the Articella: a Twelfth-Century
Commentary on the Constantinian Liber Graduum,” in Herbs and Healers
from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West: Essays in
Honor of John M. Riddle, edited by Anne Van Arsdall and Timothy Graham
(2012).

Chris Woolgar is Professor of History and Archival Studies at the

University of Southampton, and editor of the Journal of Medieval History.
He has a long-standing interest in the history of the everyday and is
currently working on food cultures. His publications include: The Great
Household in Late Medieval England (1999); The Senses in Late Medieval
England (2006); and (as editor) Testamentary Records of the English and
Welsh Episcopate, 1200–1413 (2011).
 INDEX
The conventions used here for personal names are adopted from those of
the Harvard University library catalogue.
References to images are given in italics.

Adam of Saint-Victor (i)

Ælfric (i)
affection(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
affective psychology (i)
affectus (i), (ii)
Agramont, Jacme d’ (i)
air (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii),
(xix)
Alan of Lille (i)
Albert the Great (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Alcuin of York (i)
Al-Farabi (i), (ii)
Alhacen (i), (ii)
Alps (i), (ii), (iii)
Amalarius of Metz (i), (ii), (iii)
Ambrose of Milan (i)
amnesia (i)
Ancrene Wisse (i)
angels (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
Anglo-Saxons (i)
animals (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv)
ass (i)
bestiary of the five senses (i)
boar (i)
calf (i)
chicken (i), (ii)
cow (i)
 dog (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
eagle (i), (ii)
falcon (i)
fox (i)
goat (i)
griffon (i)
hawk (i)
horse (i)
lamb (i)
lion (i), (ii)
lynx (i)
mole (i)
monkey (i), (ii)
mule (i)
ox (i)
panther (i)
parrot (i)
peacock (i)
pig (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
rabbit (hare) (i), (ii)
sheep (i)
spider (i), (ii)
tiger (i)
unicorn (i), (ii)
vulture (i)
wolf (i)
Anne of Bohemia (i)
Anselm of Canterbury (i)
anus (i)
Aragon (i)
Arderne, John (i), (ii)
Aristotelian (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Arabic Aristotelianism (i)
faculties of sense perception (i)
philosophers (i), (ii)
psychology (i), (ii), (iii)
 tradition(s) (i), (ii)
Aristotelians (i), (ii), (iii)
Aristotle (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv)
Economics (i)
Ethics (i), (ii)
Libri naturales (i)
Metaphysics (i)
On Sense and Sensation (i)
On the Soul (De anima) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
Poetics (i), (ii)
Politics (i)
Posterior Analytics (i)
Ps-Aristotelian, Problems (i)
Arnau de Vilanova (i), (ii)
aromatherapy (i)
Articella (i), (ii)
artisans see professions
asceticism (i)
ascetics (i)
astrologers (i)
Athos (Mount) (i)
Augustine of Hippo (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
City of God (i)
Confessions (i)
On Christian Doctrine (i)
Ps.-Augustine, Liber de spiritu et anima (i)
Augustine of Canterbury (i)
Auriol, Peter (i)
Averroës (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Middle Commentary (i)
Avicenna (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
Canon of Medicine (i), (ii)
commentary on the Poetics (i)
On the Soul (i)

Babees Book (i)

Bacon, Roger (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Compendium studii theologiae (i)
De signis (i)
Moralis philosophia (i), (ii)
Perspectivia (i), (ii), (iii)
bakers see professions
Balduccio Pegolotti, Francesco di (i)
baptism (i), (ii)
Bartholomew the Englishman (Bartholomaeus Anglicus) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Bartolus de Saxoferrato (i)
baths (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Bede (i), (ii)
bell(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)
Belshazzar (i)
Benjamin of Tudela (i)
Bergson, Henri (i)
Bernard de Gordon (i)
Bernard of Clairvaux (i), (ii), (iii)
Bernardus Silvestris (i)
Bersuire, Pierre (i), (ii)
Bible (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Psalm(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
Psalter illustrations (i)
Song of Songs (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
black see color(s)
Black Death (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Black Sea (i)
blacksmiths see professions
bladder stone (i)
blue see color(s)
Boccaccio, Giovanni (i), (ii), (iii)
Decameron (i)
body (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii) passim,
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi) see also breast(s); eye(s); head; heart; mouth(s); nose(s)
Christ’s (i), (ii), (iii)
saints’ (i), (ii)
body language (i)
Boethius (i), (ii), (iii)
Consolation of Philosophy (i), (ii)
De musica (i)
Bonaventure (i)
Bonvesin da la Riva (i)
Book of Vices and Virtues, The (i), (ii)
books of etiquette (i)
Boucher, Guillaume (i)
brain (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
bread see food(s)
breast(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also body
breast cancer (i), (ii)
breath(ing) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
British Isles (i)
Bromyard, John (i)
Brümsin, Hilti (i)
Buridan, John (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Byrhtferth of Ramsey (i)

candle (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
Carolingian era (i), (ii), (iii)
reform of the liturgy (i)
theologians (i)
Castle of Perseverance, The (i)
Catherine of Sienna (i)
Cave of the Patriarchs (i)
Charlemagne (i)
Charles V (of France) (i)
Charles VI (of France) (i)
Charles the Bald (i)
Chaucer, Geoffrey (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
“The Cook’s Tale” (i)
House of Fame (i), (ii)
“The Parson’a Tale” (i)
“The Second Nun’s Tale” (i)
 “The Summoner’s Tale” (i)
Chichele, Henry (Archbishop) (i)
choir(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Chrétien de Troyes (i), (ii), (iii)
Le chevalier au lion (i)
Le chevalier de la Charrete (i)
The Story of the Grail (Le Conte du Graal) (i)
church(es) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv)
Byzantine churches (i)
Chartres (i)
Fenchurch (London) (i)
Hagia Sophia (i)
Moissac (i)
Notre-Dame des Tables (i)
on the Quirinal (i)
Orvieto (i)
Paris (i)
Saint-Martin-du-Canigou (i), (ii)
San Marco (i)
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (Venice) (i)
St. Denis (i)
St. Germain (i)
Tours (i)
Thessaloniki (i)
Westminster Abbey (i)
Cicero (i), (ii)
Cistercian(s) (i), (ii)
city (i), (ii) passim, (iii), (iv), (v)
Bologna (i)
Bruges (i), (ii)
Brussels (i)
Byzantium (i)
Canterbury (i), (ii)
Chartres (i)
Cologne (i)
Conway (North Wales) (i)
 Ferrara (i)
Jerusalem (i)
London (i), (ii), (iii)
Lucerne (i)
Marburg (i)
Montpellier (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Paris (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Pavia (i)
Ravenna (i)
Reims (i)
Rome (i), (ii)
Siena (i)
Troy (i)
Troyes (i)
urban statutes (i)
Venice (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
York (i)
Coppergate (i)
Viking York (Jorvik) (i)
Ypres (i), (ii)
Clannesse (i)
cleanliness (i), (ii)
Clement IV (Pope) (i)
Clement V (Pope) (i)
clergy (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii)
clocks (i), (ii)
cloister (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
cloth (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
clothing (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv)
Cloud of Unknowing, The (i)
Clovis (king of the Franks) (i)
cognition (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
cold(s) (i), (ii)
color(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi)
black (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
 blue (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
brown (i)
gold (i)
green (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
purple (i), (ii), (iii)
red (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii)
scarlet (i)
white(ness) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
yellow (i)
Columba (Saint) (i)
common sense see senses
complexion(s) (i), (ii)
Constantine the African (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
cookbooks (i)
The Forme of Cury (The Method of Cooking) (i)
Councils (Church)
Constance (i)
Fourth Lateran (i), (ii)
Trullo (i)
court(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also law
Burgundy (i)
Savoy (i)
Majorca (i)
Court of Sapience, The (i)
crucifix(es) (i), (ii)
Crucifix(ion) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Crusade (First) (i)

dances (i), (ii), (iii)

Dante (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
De Vulgari Eloquentia (i)
Paradiso (i)
David (King) (i)
Demetrius (Saint) (i)
Denmark (i)
Deschamps, Eustache (i)
dhimmis (second-class citizens) (i)
diagnosis (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
hazelnut analogy (i)
diet (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
dietary theory (i)
Dietrich of Freiberg (i)
dissection (i), (ii)
dogs see animals
Dorothea of Montau (i)
dreaming (i)
drink(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
ale (i), (ii)
beer (i)
elixirs (i)
mead (i)
wine (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
drug(s) (i), (ii), (iii) see also medicine(s)
drunkenness (i)
Dryander, Johannes (i)
Duns Scotus, John (i), (ii)
Durand, William (i)

ear(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii) see also body; hearing
Easter see feastday(s)
edification of the senses (i)
Edmund of Abingdon (Archbishop of Canterbury) (i)
Edward I (of England) (i)
Edward II (of England) (i)
Edward IV (of England) (i)
Egypt (i)
Eike von Repgow (i)
ekphrasis (i), (ii)
Elizabeth of Spalbeek (i)
emotion(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
enargeia (i), (ii)
England (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi)
Ephrem the Syrian (i)
Eucharist (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi)
experimentum (experience, experiment) (i)
eye(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv) see also optics; sight; vision(s)
of the mind (i), (ii)
of the heart (i)
inner eye (i)

Faber, Felix (i)

famine(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Farabi see Al-Farabi
feast(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
feastday(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi)
Easter (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
finger(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
fingernails (i), (ii)
Fitz Stephen, William (i), (ii)
food(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii)
beef (i), (ii)
blaunche porre (leek sauce) (i)
bread (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
cheese (i)
fast-food (i)
founet (i)
gruel or porridge (i)
meat pies (i)
mutton (i)
noumbles (organ meat) (i)
pork (i)
Four Masters’ Gloss (i)
Froissart, Jean (i)
fur(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) see also luxury

Galen (i), (ii), (iii)

 Art of Medicine (i)
On Simple Medicines (De simplici medicina) (i)
On Temperaments (De complexionibus) (i)
The Usefulness of Parts (i)
medical tradition (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
physiological doctrine (i)
Galenists (i)
garbage (i), (ii), (iii)
garden(s) (i), (ii)
gates (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
gaze (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also sight; vision(s)
gem(stones) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
emeralds (i), (ii)
jacinths (i)
jewels (jewelry) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
rubies (i)
sapphires (i)
Genoese (i), (ii)
Gerald of Aurillac (i)
Gerald of Wales (i)
Germany (i), (ii)
Gerson, Jean (i)
Gertrude of Helfta (i)
Gesta Witigonis (i)
gesture(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi)
veneration (devotion) (i), (ii), (iii)
religious (i), (ii)
Gifts of the Holy Spirit (i)
Giles of Rome (i)
Gilles de Corbeil (i)
On Urines (De urinis) (i)
Giotto di Bondone (i)
Godescalc Evangelistary (i)
Goes, Hugo van der (i)
gold (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
Gower, John (i), (ii), (iii)
green see color(s)
Gregory Nazianzen (i)
Gregory of Sinai (i)
Gregory of Tours (i), (ii)
Gregory the Great (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
Grosseteste, Robert (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Guillaume de Digulleville (i), (ii)
Guillaume de la Villeneuve (i)
Guglielmo da Saliceto (i)
Gundisalinnus, Domenicus (i)

Hadewijch of Brabant (i)

Haly Abbas (’Ali ibn al-’Abbas al Majusi) (i), (ii)
hand(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), see also body; touch
“handfasting” (i)
Hartmann of Aue (i)
Hawes, Stephen (i)
head (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) see also body
hearing (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii) see also ear(s); noise(s);
senses; sound(s)
acoustic environment (i), (ii)
acoustic experience (i)
acoustic signs (i)
auditory dimension (i)
heart (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) see also body
Henri de Mondeville (i)
Henry III (of England) (i)
Henry V (of England) (i)
Henry de Grosmont (Duke of Lancaster) see Henry of Lancaster
Henry of Ghent (i)
Henry of Lancaster (i)
Livre de Seyntz Medicines (i)
Herder, Johann Gottfried (i)
Herman the German (i)
Heymeric van de Velde (Heymericus de Campo) (i)
Hildegard of Bingen (i)
Hilton, Walter (i)
Hippocrates (i)
etiology (i)
Holofernes (i)
honey (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also sweetness
Horace (i)
Art of Poetry (Ars poetica, Ad Pisonem) (i), (ii), (iii)
Hugh of St. Victor (i)
humors (four) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
Hundred Years’ War (i), (ii)

Ibn al-Gazzār (i)

Provisions for the Traveler and the Nourishment of the Settled (i)
Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad (i)
Ibn Jubayr, Muhammad (i)
icons (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
iconoclasm (i)
iconography (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Carolingian ivory (Frankfurt ivory) (i)
Cartulary of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou (i)
ivories of Metz (i)
liturgical (i)
of the five senses (i)
Psalter of Odo of Asti (i)
Ignatius of Smolensk (i)
immixtio manuum (interposition of hands) (i)
Incarnation (i), (ii), (iii)
ingestion (i), (ii), (iii)
manducatio spiritualis (spiritual ingestion) (i)
inn(s) (i), (ii), (iii) see also tavern(s)
Innocent III (Pope) (i)
intellection (i), (ii)
intellectus (aspectus) (i), (ii)
intelligibilia (i)
invisibilia Dei (i)
Isaac Judaeus (i), (ii), (iii)
Isabella of France (i)
Isidore of Seville (i), (ii), (iii)
Italy (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
ivory (i), (ii)

Jacob’s Well (i)

Jacopone da Todi (i)
Jacques de Vitry (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Jaime I of Aragon (King) (i)
James of Milan (i)
Jean de Jandun (i), (ii), (iii)
Jean de Meun (i)
Jean de Tournemire (i), (ii)
jewels see gem(stones)
Jews (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Joannitius (Hunayn ibn Ishāq) (i), (ii)
John of Gaddesden (i)
John of Garland (i)
John of Jandun see Jean de Jandun
John of Metz (i), (ii)
Jordanus de Turre (Jordan de Latour) (i)
Judas (i)
Juliana of Mount-Cornillon (i)

kerôtè (melted wax) (i)

Kilwardby, Robert (i)
kiss(es) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)

La Tour Landry, Geoffrey de (i)

Lactantius Placidus (i)
Lambert of Hersfeld (i)
Lanfranc of Milan (i)
Langland, William (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Latini, Brunetto (i)
latrines (i), (ii)
law (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
court(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
judge(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
lawyers (i)
Leonardo da Vinci (i)
leprosy (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Lichfield, William (i)
light (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii),
(xix)
literacy (i)
liturgical objects (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
chalice (i), (ii), (iii)
monstrances (i), (ii)
paten (i), (ii)
reliquary (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
thurible (i), (ii)
liturgy (i) passim, (ii) passim
Locke, John (i)
London Lickpenny (i)
Louis (Duke of Savoy) (i)
love (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
Luidgar (Saint) (i)
luxury (goods, imports, adornments) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) see also fur(s); satin(s); silk(s)
belts (i), (ii), (iii)
fabric(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
brocades (i)
carpets (i)
cloth of gold (i)
Lydgate, John (i), (ii)
Lynceus (Argonauts) (i)

Magna Carta (i)

Maiestas Domini (i), (ii)
Margaret of Oingt (i)
market(place) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii) passim, (xiii)
marriage (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Martianus Capella (i), (ii)
Martin (Saint) (i)
mass(es) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Sanctus (i), (ii)
materiality (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
medicine(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) passim see also drug(s)
physician(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) passim
Salernitan physicians (i)
theory (i)
anatomy (i), (ii)
pathology (i), (ii)
pharmacology (i)
physiology (i), (ii)
Mediterranean (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
memory see senses
Ménagier de Paris (i)
merchants (i), (ii) passim, (iii) passim
manual(s) (i), (ii)
mind (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv)
Mirk, John (i)
mirror (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
monastery (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii)
monasticism (i), (ii) see also monk(s)
theology (i), (ii)
tradition (i)
money-changers (i), (ii)
monk(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) see also monasticism
moral theology (i), (ii)
morality (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
morality play(s) (i), (ii)
mosque(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
mouth(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) see also body
multisensoriality (multisensuality) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also senses
musical instruments (i)
 drums (i), (ii), (iii)
trumpets (i), (ii)
harp (i)
organs (i)
fifes (i)
horns (i)
pipe (i)
Muslim(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
Mussato, Albertino (i)
mystery plays (i)
mysticism (i), (ii)
mystic(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
mystical contemplation (i)
mystical marriage (i)

nails (i), (ii)

Nebuchadneazzar (i)
Neckam, Alexander (i), (ii)
Neoplatonism (i), (ii), (iii) see also Plato
Nicetas Stéthatos (i)
Nicholas of Autrecourt (i)
noise(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv) see also hearing;
sound(s)
nose(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii) see also body; smell
novices (i)

Ofhuys, Gaspar (i)

oil(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
oil lamp(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
Olivi, Peter John (i), (ii), (iii)
optics (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also eye(s); sight
after-images (i)
extramission(ist) theory (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
illusion(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
intromission theory (i), (ii), (iii)
Perspectivist theory (i), (ii)
 prism (i)
rays of light (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
rectilinear rays (i)
visual nerves (i)
visual ray (i), (ii)
visual spirit (i)
orator(s) (i), (ii)
oratory (i), (ii)
Oresme, Nicole (Nicolas) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Origen (i)
Orpheus (i), (ii)
Ovid (i), (ii)

pain (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
Paradise (i), (ii)
Paris see city
Patrick (Saint) (i)
Paul (Apostle) (i)
peasant(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Pecham, John (i)
perfume(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
Perotin (i)
Peter Lombard (i)
Peter of Limoges (i), (ii), (iii)
The Moral Treatise on the Eye (Oculus moralis) (i), (ii)
Peter of Luxembourg (Saint) (i)
Peter the Venerable (i)
Petrarch, Francesco (i), (ii), (iii)
Petrus Christus (i)
perception(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x) passim, (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv),
(xvi), (xvii), (xviii), (xix)
pewter (i), (ii)
Philip III (of France) (i)
Philip Augustus (of France) (i), (ii)
Philip, Landgrave of Hesse (i)
philosophy, natural (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
physiognomy (i)
pig see animals
pilgrimage(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
plague(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
Platearius of Salerno (i)
Plato (i) see also Neoplatonism
pleasure(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii)
Plotinus (i)
poetry (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
theory (i), (ii)
polyphony (i)
pomanders (i), (ii)
port(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
prayer(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)
preacher(s) (i), (ii), (iii)
priest(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
printed books (i), (ii)
processions (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
professions (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
apothecaries (i), (ii)
artisans (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
bakers (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
blacksmiths (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
bookmakers (i)
brooch-makers (i)
butchers (i), (ii), (iii)
carters (i)
cooks (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
drapers (i), (ii), (iii)
dyers (i), (ii)
fishmongers (i), (ii)
fullers (i)
furbishers (i)
goldsmiths (i), (ii)
grocers (i)
innkeepers (i)
 menders (i)
mercers (i)
pepperers (i), (ii) see also spices
spice sellers (i) see also spices
stonemasons (i)
tanners (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
weighers (i)
wine-criers (i), (ii)
prostitution (i), (ii), (iii)
Prudentius of Troyes (i)
Psalm(s) see Bible
psychology (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
pulse (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
pulse diagnosis (pulse-taking) (i), (ii), (iii)
pulse-music (i), (ii)
punishment(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Purchart (von der Reichenau) (i)

Quintilian (i)

rays of light see optics

reading (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
reason (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
Reconquista (i)
red see color(s)
Reformation (i), (ii)
reliquary see liturgical objects
Remigius (Bishop of Reims) (i)
Resurrection (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
revolt(s) (i), (ii)
rhetoric (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Richard II (of England) (i), (ii)
Richard de Fournival (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Rigord (Monk of St Denis) (i)
river(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
Roger of Howden (i)
Roland of Cremona (i)
Roland of Parma (i)
Romanesque period (i)
Romanos Melodos (i)
rosewater (i), (ii)
Ruiz, Juan (i)
Rupert of Deutz (i)

saffron see spices

saint(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
cult of saints (i), (ii), (iii)
saint’s lives (i), (ii), (iii)
Salernitan Questions (i)
salt see spices
Salutati, Coluccio (i)
satins (i), (ii) see also luxury
satire (i), (ii), (iii)
Saul (King) (i)
Second Salernitan Demonstration (i)
senses see hearing; multisensoriality; pleasure(s); sight; smell; taste; touch
agency (i)
agent sense (sensus agens) (i)
as gates (i), (ii)
as watergates (i)
as windows (i)
deprivation (i)
edification see edification of the senses
environment (i), (ii), (iii)
external senses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
hierarchy (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
internal senses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
common sense (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
memory (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
spiritual senses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
sensibilia (i)
sensuality (i), (ii)
Severus, Sulpicius (i)
sewer(s) (i), (ii)
Sheppey, John (i)
Sicard of Cremona (i)
Sidonius Apollinaris (i)
Sigebert of Gembloux (i)
sight (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii),
(xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx), (xxxi),
(xxxii), (xxxiii), (xxxiv), (xxxv), (xxxvi), (xxxvii), (xxxviii), (xxxix) see also eye(s); gaze;
optics; senses; vision(s)
superiority (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
silk(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also luxury
silver (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
sin (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also vice(s)
curiosity (vitium curiositatis) (i)
lust (i), (ii)
singing (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii)
school (i)
Sister-Books (i)
smallpox (i)
smell (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii),
(xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx), (xxxi),
(xxxii), (xxxiii) see also nose(s); senses
foul (bad, noxious) odors (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi)
incense (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
odor of sanctity (i), (ii), (iii)
“pre smell” (preodoratio) (i)
sweet odor (smells) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
swet anoyntmentes (sweet ointments) (i)
underarm or bodily odor (i)
Somme le roi (i), (ii)
song(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix)
liturgical song(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Soranus of Ephesus (i)
soul(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii)
 animal (i), (ii)
intellectual (i), (ii), (iii)
plant (i)
rational (i)
sound(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx) see
also hearing; noise(s)
theory of sound waves (i)
Spain (i), (ii)
speech (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)
spectacle(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
speculation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
spices (i), (ii)
cinnamon (i), (ii)
cloves (i), (ii), (iii)
cumin (i)
galanga (i)
ginger (i)
pepper (i), (ii), (iii)
saffron (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
salt (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
sugar (i), (ii)
St. Trudperter Hohelied (i)
Staden, Hans (i), (ii), (iii)
stimulation (i), (ii), (iii)
Sugar (Abbot of St Denis) (i)
Summa de saporibus et odoribus (i), (ii)
Summa pulsuum (i)
sumptuary legislation (i), (ii)
surgery (i), (ii)
sweetness (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) see also honey; spices
sweet odor see smell
swet anoyntmentes (sweet ointments) see smell
synaisthesis (synesthesia) (i)
Syria (i)
Tacuinum sanitatis (i)
tanners see professions
taste (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii), (xviii),
(xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix) see also senses;
tongue
tavern(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also inn(s)
temperament(s) (i), (ii)
Teodorico Borgognoni (i)
textiles (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
theater (i), (ii), (iii)
theophany (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Thomas (Abbot) (i)
Thomas (Apostle) (i)
Thomas Aquinas (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi)
Adoro te devote (i)
Summa theologiae (i)
theory of “turning to phantasms” (i)
Thomas à Becket (i)
Thomas Cantilupe (i), (ii)
Thomas of Cantimpré (i)
tongue (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also body; taste
touch (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx),
(xxxi), (xxxii), (xxxiii), (xxxiv), (xxxv) see also hand(s); senses
most base sense (i)
town chronicle (i)
town crier(s) (i), (ii)
criées de bans (official pronouncements) (i)
transubstantiation (i), (ii)
Treatments for Women, On (i)
Trevisa, John (i), (ii), (iii)
Trotula (i), (ii), (iii)
Tupinambá (Brazil) (i), (ii)
Turks (i)

Ugolino di Prete Ilario (i)

Ulrich of Strassbourg (i)
university (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
urine (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)
jordan (urine flask) (i), (ii), (iii)
uroscopy (i), (ii)
uterine suffocation (i)

vapor(s) (i), (ii), (iii)

vice(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also sin
Victorine theology (i)
Vincent of Beauvais (i), (ii)
vinegar (i), (ii)
Vintler, Niklaus (i)
Virgin Mary (i)
virtue(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii)
allegories of the virtues and vices (i)
cardinal virtues (i), (ii)
contrary virtues (i)
lists of vices and virtues (i)
vision(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii),
(xviii), (xix), (xx), (xxi), (xxii), (xxiii), (xxiv), (xxv), (xxvi), (xxvii), (xxviii), (xxix), (xxx),
(xxxi) see also eye(s); gaze; sight
mystical visions (i)
spiritual vision (i), (ii)
otherworld (i)
visual weapons (i)
pitture infamanti (defamatory images) (i)
Vladimir (Prince of Kiev) (i)

Wace (i)
wall(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi)
washing (i), (ii)
aquamaniles (i), (ii)
La Lavenderebregge (site of laundresses) (i)
water(s) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv)
wells (i), (ii)
Wenlok of Westminster (Abbot) (i)
white(ness) see color(s)
William of Ockham (i)
William of Saint Thierry (i), (ii)
William Peraldus, (i), (ii), (iii)
wine see drink(s)
wisdom (sapientia) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Witelo (i)
Witigowo (Abbot) (i)
women (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x)
ale-seller (i)
genitals (i)
marketplace (i)
midwife (i)
mothers (i), (ii)
nurses (i)
peasant woman (i)
prostitutes (i)
queens and princesses (i), (ii)
saleswomen (i)
virgin (i)
visionaries (i)
widow (i)
women’s work (i), (ii)
wool (i)
 Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014

© Richard G. Newhauser and Contributors, 2014

Richard G. Newhauser has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as Editor of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: HB: 978-0-8578-5340-0

Set: 978-0-8578-5338-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A cultural history of the senses in the Middle Ages, 500–1450 / edited by Richard Newhauser.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–85785–340–0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Senses and sensation—Europe—History. 2.
Perception—Europe—History. I. Newhauser, Richard, 1947–
BF233.C854 2014
152.1094’0902—dc23

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